EVERY WORD blog tour is over - sads, but thank youse all

Hello!   The North American blog tour for Every Word is over – sads.  I hope you had a good time checking out the various posts about the book, especially the silly one where I talked about chopping wood in thongs.  Before we go any further, I’d like to sincerely thank all the bloggers who participated – they did a mighty job, and showed amazing energy and enthusiasm, so I’ve listed them all here for awesomeness:

Sam at Bellsie Books

Mandy at Forever Young Adult

Eri at Airy Reads

Heather at Books & Quilts

Nicole and  at Reading Lark

Michelle at Michelle & Leslie’s Book Picks

Jen at The Starry Eyed Revue

Amanda at Gun in Act One

Angie at Angieville

Gillian at Writer of Wrongs

Shilpa at sukasareads

Sabrina at Hiver et Café

Adrienne at Books & Bassetts

Michelle at FAB Book Reviews

Marie at Ramblings of a Daydreamer

Liz at Midnight Bloom Reads

Amy at Tripping Over Books

Rachel at The Reader’s Den

Lauren at Love Is Not a Triangle

Kristen at My Friends are Fiction

Morgan at Gone With the Words

Leanne at authorleannedyck

Some people really went all out for their end of the tour – check out these amazing artworks!  I especially love the drawing of Rachel and James (I want that as a poster):

I’d also like to extend a special thank you to my Tundra liaison/publicist/blog tour manager and all round incredible person, Sylvia Chan.  Sylvia worked above and beyond the call on this tour of duty, and she has handled everything with her usual friendliness and calm, and I’m hugely appreciative of all the effort she put in.  Thank you Sylvia!!

Also, thank you to all of you who Liked, RTed, reposted, commented, added and joined in the Every Word tour – with your help, the news about Every Word will spread in the US and Canada, and Rachel and Mycroft will find some new friends.  I’m full of appreciation for everyone who gave the book a little nudge along, and I hope, if you put your name down for a giveaway, you get your heart’s desire!

Blog touring is some exhausting work (and it’s not even real *live* touring! Geddouttahere!) and I’ve gotta say, I’m very glad to be back in the writing groove for now.  I’m working on a New Thing, which is still a bit too new for me to talk about with confidence yet, but it’s coming along.  I’ve also got some good news – along with Gabrielle Tozer, Will Kostakis and Melissa Keil, I’m going to be headlining the CBCA National Conference in May 2016.  If you’re in Sydney then, do come along!

Until then – see you around the traps

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub: November 2015 Book Discussion Post – Illuminae (Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff)

Hi and welcome to our first book club Discussion Post! 

Now, as book club host, it’s kind of my job to be impartial, but this is the first book off the rank, and (hopefully) the only book I’ll get to choose over the course of book club.  And I’ve got to say, I loved Illuminae – it shook up my head in the best possible way.  I’ve seen a few books that have tried to meld the narrative aspects with graphic-novel style, but this is the first book that I think actually managed to pull it off.  From page one to finish, I absolutely could not put it down (I read it in almost a single sitting) and I was truly blown away by the finale.  Now I’m praying that Brad Pitt and his movie production mates do the novel justice on the big screen.

So – on with the show!  Illuminae is reviewed by Danielle Binks, of Alphareader fame, and she had some great things to say about it, including this:

“Y’know how Battlestar Galactica is actually exploring religion and civil liberty … Or, okay – how Joss Whedon’s Firefly isn’t really just an intergalactic-Western? But rather it’s inspired by the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg and the everyday people who are stepped on in the great moments of history, and that it’s even a story of the immigrant experience and outsiders pushed to the fringe by the victors in a war they never wanted any part of? Yep, okay – well, in the same way there is a lot happening beneath the surface of Illuminae.”

You can read Danielle’s full review of Illuminae right here.

What did you think about Illuminae?  Add comments below, or feel free to join in the Facebook group for discussion about this book, as well as general book talk and a bit of silliness on the side.

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub: Author Q&A – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Illuminae)

To value-add to our book club experience, I’ve asked authors whose books we’re reading to either a) answer a short Q&A, or b) participate in an FB author chat, if they’re able.  As authors can get very busy, I’ve tried to keep it light-hearted, with the emphasis on something fun and easy.

The authors of our November book, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, have been very busy indeed of late, so I’m hugely appreciative that they’ve agreed to join in at #LoveOzYAbookclub with the answers to a few silly questions.  The Discussion Thread for Illuminae will go up early next week – until then, enjoy!

* One curious or unusual thing about you that most people don’t know: is that Jay is a Karaoke King (you should hear him do metal songs) and Amie used to work as a professional sailing coach—she walked on a boat before she took her first steps on land.

* Your work space – tell us about it: Right now Amie’s is wherever she can perch amidst towering stacks of boxes, because she’s moving house, but usually it’s a study lined with bookshelves, where she writes at her treaddesk, or in an armchair. Jay has a study too, with a great big fancy desk and a fireplace… but he always ends up writing on the couch in his uggs.

* Writing Must-Haves – snacks, drinks, music…whatever: For Amie, the music is mostly by Muse or Two Steps From Hell, and for Jay, it’s mostly silence, or the classical music of Ludovico Einaudi (which is hilarious, because usually Jay listens to metal.) When we’re brainstorming, Jay drinks Jack Daniels and Amie eats chips. When we’re at home writing, it’s Red Bull for Jay and Pepsi Max for Amie all the way.

* If your book was a ride at SeaWorld, it would be…: banned for its incredibly high death toll.

* The zombie apocalypse strikes, but it’s okay, cos you have your choice of weapons, and you choose…: copies of Illuminae. Seriously, have you seen that thing? It’s the size of a brick. As our secondary weapon, we choose a friend who runs far more slowly than us. That should slow them up.

Thanks Amie and Jay! And see you all ‘round the Discussion Thread next week :)

xxEllie

Spring is for hayfever, and the Every Word NA blog tour

Hello again!  I feel like it’s been ages since I wrote an update post – but that’s okay.  I’ve been keeping busy with speaking engagements and workshops in schools and events, and also with the #LoveOzYAbookclub which has been the topic of my last few posts.  We have our first book for the book club  – Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – which is pretty exciting.  And I’ve been dealing with hayfever and Spring and the last term of school rolling to a close…all in all, that’s been enough to keep me on the hop.

The other thing that’s on the hop is the North American tour for Every Word.

The book was released in the US and Canada a few months ago, and I’m very excited that readers overseas are finally getting their hot little hands on it.  I’ve been receiving some (sometimes irate) emails about WHEN IS YOUR SECOND BOOK COMING OUT HERE OMG WHY THIS WAIT ARGH, so I’m pleased to finally be able to plug Every Word and enjoy the way folks are getting into it.

The blog tour starts next week, and it’s a very full schedule of tour stops.  Some bloggers are doing reviews, and some bloggers have livened up their tour stops with a bit of silliness/seriousness from me.  I’ve answered interview questions (everything from ‘James Mycroft is a jerk: discuss’ to explaining how I got that weird scar on my right foot), and given location pic-tours of London, and hopefully shown everyone a pretty good time.  If you’d like to catch up with what people are saying (or you just want to know how I got the weird scar), please do check out the tour stops below:

Monday Nov 16

Bellsie Books

Forever Young Adult

Airy Reads

Books and Quilts

Reading Lark

Tuesday Nov 17

Books and Writing

Michelle and Leslie’s Book Picks

The Starry Eyed Revue

Gun in Act One

Wednesday Nov 18

Writer of Wrongs

Sukasareads

Hiver et Café

Books and Bassets

Thursday Nov 19

FAB BOOK REVIEWS

Ramblings of a Daydreamer

Midnight Bloom Reads

Tripping Over Books

The Reader’s Den

Friday Nov 20

Love Is Not A Triangle

My Friends are Fiction

Gone With the Words

Authorleannedyck

I’ve also been doing a sneaky little promo for the tour on social media, where I’ve been posting pics of the journey that Rachel and James took from Melbourne to different places all over London:

I hope I haven’t confused anybody, because I’m not actually in London right now…

But the snaps have been very fun!  If you’d like to check out the pics, or signal boost the blog tour by cross-posting, go for your life – they’re gathered under the hashtags #EveryWord  #Wattscroft on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

 I’ll update again in a little while, but until then, hope you’re travelling well, and have fun reading the tour posts!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub : November 2015 book selection

Welcome to the #LoveOzYAbookclub debut book selection!

This month’s book is our very first, and the only book I get to choose – after November, the title selections will be made by the authors of the books under discussion.  I spent a long time thinking about which title to choose…and finally made a decision by asking myself Which book would I want to read more than any other?

So…*drumroll*… our book for the month of November will be Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

Illuminae is the first book in The Illuminae Files series, and has been described as “a fantastically entertaining space opera with explosions and romance” combined with “a thoughtful and expansive tale of political intrigue and subterfuge”.  It’s one of the biggest things to come out of Australian YA in a long time – it’s already hit the New York Times Bestseller List.  It’s also (if you have a quick glance at the insides) a mashup of graphic design and story – in fact, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

AmieKaufman is the co-author of the Starbound Trilogy with Meagan Spooner, and Jay Kristoff is the author of The Lotus Wars series, and they both live in Melbourne and are both quite lovely.  Amie and Jay have already agreed to choose a title for #LoveOzYAbookclub for next month.

I've made an arrangement with Boomerang Books (who specialise in Australian books and had all the titles I searched for at excellent prices) so that #LoveOzYAbookclub members can get free shipping.  If you would like to order the book through Boomerang Books, use the code loveoz at the ‘use a promotional code’ step, and you won't have to pay for postage.

So go forth and read!  I hope you enjoy Illuminae, and I’ll look forward to the discussion we’ll have about it at the end (probably early in the last week) of November here on the #LoveOzYAbookclub group.

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub: Title Suggestions Masterlist and How This All Works

Hi all, this is the introductory post for the #LoveOzYAbookclub – welcome!  If you enjoy reading YA books, and specifically Australian YA, then this is the club for you.  I'm not going to make stupid references to Fight Club, cos that is passe, and the only rule of #LoveOzYAbookclub is talk all you want about bookclub.  Oh, and invite whoever you want - young readers, older readers, readers of all shapes and sizes and persuasions.  The more the merrier. 

I’ll be updating with posts here on the blog, but running the discussion threads on the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook group page – feel free to run on over there and join to stay current.

This post is just to say hi, and thanks for coming along, and to show off the list of books from which we’ll likely select the books we’ll be reading.  We'll read a book a month - makes it nice and easy, huh?  I’ve made a big OzYA master list below, which will be added to from time to time, as new titles get suggested and old ones get crossed off.

If we’ve left out your fave, or you’d like to suggest a particular title to be read for #LoveOzYAbookclub, add a comment here or at the FB page, or you can always tweet me (just remember to tag me and #LoveOzYAbookclub).

This will be the process for #LoveOzYAbookclub (title selection and general procedure):

I’ll select the first book (because I'm bossy like that), which I’ll announce in early November.  Then I’ll ask the author of that book to choose the next title from the list (for December), and so on down the line (Janurary, February, etc...).  If the author of the current book doesn’t want to choose or is unavailable to do so, I’ll ask someone else to do it or do it myself.  I’ll ask someone who enjoyed the book to review it for the first discussion post, which I'll put up here/on FB in the last half of each month.  Then folks who'd like to comment about how they liked the book of the month can take it from there.  And so on, ad infinitum, until we run out of books, or the internet collapses, or the zombie apocalypse arrives, or whatever.

So, you got that?

*I'll pick the first book, then it will domino from there

*I'll make a Title post at the start of each month, letting you know which book we're reading

*I'll make a second Discussion post near the end of the month, after we've all had a chance to read

*Discussion and comments will be on the relevant thread over at the #LoveOzYAbookclub FB group page.

*If the author of the book is amenable, I’ll try to arrange an interview, or a Facebook author chat, during the relevant month.

*I’m also in the process of organising a way for those buying the book to get free shipping for online orders.

Masterlist of OzYA Books Suggested So Far (feel free to suggest more!):

InBetweenDays – Vikki Wakefield

TheFlywheel – Erin Gough

Risk – Fleur Ferris

Talk Under Water – Kathryn Lomer

Sidekicks – Will Kostakis 

Razorhurst– Justine Larbalestier

GoodOil – Laura Buzo

Zeroes– Margo Lanagan, Scott Westerfeld, Deborah Biancotti

The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl – Melissa Keil

The Book of Days – KA Barker

GreenValentine – Lili Wilkinson

A Little Wanting Song – Cath Crowley

The Intern – Gabrielle Tozer

Notes from the Teenage Underground – Simmone Howell
Burn Bright - Marianne dePierres

My Life as an Alphabet – Barry Jonsberg

Head of the River – Pip Harry

Atmospheric– Carole Wilkinson
Deucalion - Brian Caswell

Grace Beside Me – Sue McPherson

Steal My Sunshine – Emily Gale

Hate is Such A Strong Word – Sarah Ayoub

How to be Happy – Dave Burton

Undine– Penni Russon
The Last Girl - Michael Adams

90 Packets of Instant Noodles – Deb Fitzpatrick

Finding Grace – Alyssa Brugman

Clara in Washington – Penni Tangey
Living Hell - Catherine Jinks

Killing Darcy – Melissa Lucashenko

Jasper Jones – Craig Silvey

Into the River – Ted Dawe
The Extinction Gambit - Michael Pryor

Girl Saves Boy – Steph Bowe
First Person Shooter - Cameron Raynes

ThingsYou Either Hate or Love – Brigid Lowry

Laurinda _ Alice Pung

Cooper Bartholomew is Dead – Rebecca James

Spark – Rachael Craw
Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club - Alison Goodman

Thrive– Mary Borsellino

The Dead I Know – Scot Gardner

The Protected – Claire Zorn

Hating Alison Ashley – Robin Klein
Between The Lives - Jessica Shirvington

One True Thing – Nicole Hayes

48 Shades of Brown – Nick Earls

Twinmaker: Jump – Sean Williams

Whisper– Christine Keighery

Illuminae– Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff 

Finnikin of the Rock – Melina Marchetta

How to Make A Bird – Martine Murray

Rise of the Fallen – Teagan Chilcott

A Small Madness _ Dianne Touchell
Eon - Alison Goodman

Facing Up – Carolyn Gilpin

Fire in the Sea – Myke Bartlett

Little Paradise – Gabrielle Wang

Intruder– Christine Bongers
Black Glass - Meg Mundell

Crashing Down – Kate McCaffrey

Zac & Mia – AJ Betts

Cloudwish – Fiona Wood

The Gathering – Isobelle Carmody

Frankie– Shivaun Plozza

Nona and Me – Clare Atkins

Deadly,Unna? – Phillip Gwynne

Pieces of Sky – Trinity Doyle

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex – Gabrielle Williams

Does My Head Look Big in this? – Randa Abdel-Fattah

A Single Stone – Meg McKinley

So Much To Tell You – John Marsden

Summer Skin – Kirsty Eagar 

The Cracks in the Kingdom – Jaclyn Moriarty

Sabriel – Garth Nix

You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About – Daniel Herborn
Stay With Me - Maureen McCarthy

Shadows– Paula Weston

The Vanishing Moment – Margaret Wild

Footy Dreaming – Michael Hyde

This is Shyness – Leanne Hall

I Am the Messenger – Markus Zusak

Frankie and Joely – Nova Weetman
Preloved - Shirley Marr

Cry Blue Murder – Kim Kane, Marion Roberts

Calypso Summer – Jared Thomas

Freedom Ride – Sue Lawson

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf – Ambelin Kwaymullina
The Pause - John Larkin

The Astrologer’s Daughter – Rebecca Lim

Five Parts Dead – Tim Pegler
Sky Legs - Irini Savvides

Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean – Kirsty Murray, ed.

Losing It – Julia Lawrinson

Fairytales for Wilde Girls – Allyse Near
The Big Dry - Tony Davis

The Tricksters – Margaret Mahy

Cracked – Clare Strahan
Oracle - Jackie French

Run – Tim Sinclair
Kill The Music - Nansi Kunze

The Minnow - Diane Sweeney
Snow White: This is No Fairy Tale - Keith Austin

*Many of the authors have multiple books, so I’ve only put up one book per author.  The decision on which book to include was either suggested, or made by me (because I wanted to read a certain book.  Soz.).  If you’d like to suggest a different book for the same author, that’s fine, but let’s make sure we spread the love around.

*Some books have collaborative authors – once their joint book is read and crossed out, I’m happy to include works they’ve penned as individuals.

*Yes, I’ve included some NZ authors (mainly because I want to read Into the River and Spark, and why not).

*No, I haven’t put my own books on the list, cos I didn’t want to feel like a der.  I’m getting plenty of love by facilitating this bookclub, which is good enough for me (and if you want to go read the Every series, thank you, and the link to Booktopia is on the sidebar at right! #officialplug).

* If you’re a blogger/reviewer and you’d like to have your reviews included in the bookclub, please get in touch.

And that’s it!  Hope you like the list and please feel welcome to join in the reading and discussion by joining the #LoveOzYA bookclub on Facebook.  Keep an eye out for the first book, coming up soon (first week of November) – I’ll post it here and cross-post to the group plus everywhere else.  I can’t wait to start reading!

xxEllie

Every Word overseas release! and making new ideas (is hard)

Every Word, the second book in the Every series, has been released this month in North America and the Philippines through Tundra Books/Penguin Random House – awesome J

I’m pretty happy about that.  Early reviews have been coming in, and that’s been keeping me happy too.  If you’d like to read what people are saying, peruse below…

Angieville @ Bibliocrack Reviews

Read.Sleep.Repeat

It's a Book Life

Forever Young Adult

Airy Reads

Ramblings of a Daydreamer

The Book Wars

Hiver et Cafe

YA Romantics

CM Magazine: University of Manitoba

Reading Bifrost

I’m also rapt to announce that Every Word has won the Best YA fiction award at this year’s Davitt Awards.  WOOT!

The Davitts, organised by Sisters in Crime (the Australian women crime writers association), has been running for 15 years, and this year, 96 books by female crime writers were up for consideration.  It’s a huge honour to be given the award, from a stellar line-up of shortlisted authors, and I’m incredibly grateful.   

What else has been happening?  Well, these last two weeks I’ve been working up ideas for a new book project.  You would think that just ‘coming up with ideas’ is not a very labour-intensive job – it doesn’t sound as difficult or time-consuming as actually sitting down and writing an entire book.  In fact, to some extent, this is true: the me who’s ‘coming up with ideas’ actually bears a strong resemblance to the me who’s ‘washing dishes’ or ‘working in the garden’ or ‘going for a walk’.  But concept-generation is hard work.  I’ve discovered that it’s much harder work than writing.

Creating a new book is always a process.  I get a inspired by lots of things, but not everything I find inspiring is enough to hang a book on. Developing every idea takes mental effort, and involves looking inside yourself for something you can use in the writing.

Certainly looking inside is part of my role, as a writer.  But in the act of writing, only half of my role is in self-examination for some kind of ‘emotional depth charge’ (thank you for that phrase, Cate Kennedy) that resonates, that you know you can use to make readers resonate too.  The other fifty percent of actual writing is usually about regurgitating my observations.  I spend a lot of time observing the way people look and behave, the conversations they have, how their ways of thinking are inscribed on the ways they interact.  Those are the details I borrow from life and cannibalise to make an imaginary person or situation real.

But when you’re thinking up ideas, the process is 100% internal.  You need to examine yourself for something you want to show, something you want to explain.  What is inside you is the Important Thing that informs your original idea.  It is the Something You Want to Say.

I find that kind of self-examination exhausting, but it generates ideas.  Quite often, these ideas are hard won – I have to wrest my idea out of a quagmire of ‘that’s too embarrassing to write about’, or ‘oh, that’s too personal! Too revealing!’, and so on.  And so I am invested in each idea, as it emerges – blinking, uncurling its damp wings – and I think each of them is beautiful. 

I would like to write ALL of them.  But I probably won’t.  Sure, I’d like to think that each of these ideas has promise, potential to be a whole book – like I said, you can make a book out of almost anything.  You can make a book about encyclopedia salesmen, or someone doing their laundry: it’s all in how the characters act, the hidden secrets and trauma inside every person, and where those secrets take them.  But I need to narrow down my options.  I want to write something that resonates both for me and for readers, something that other people will find interesting, something that has some broad appeal (broader than just an audience of one – me – at any rate).

So I think I’ve come up with something, something new and interesting – I mean, I hope it’s interesting – and I’m about to embark on the process of letting the characters take over.  I’ll be thinking, living and breathing the characters and concepts over the next few months, slowly giving in to them as they start to come alive and talk to each other, while I note everything down.  I’ll be filling up exercise books with scribbled research and scraps of dialogue, making boards on Pinterest, tearing out pictures and sticky-taping them up on my study wall, talking to people who might be able to help me out with the character development or the plotlines.

It’s an exciting time!  Also a strangely nervous time, as I wait to see if I can really make the concept come to life.  So…I guess I’m asking you to wish me luck?  And I hope you’re going well.  It’s school holiday time here, blowing in with the spring winds, which I s’pose is as good a time to start something new as any.  If it’s not spring where you are, I hope you’re finding some tiny blooming thing to keep you happy.

xxEllie