{fiction, instead of lies}

Book Divas, the Sinuate Media owned marketing website is announcing their upcoming author visits. Hobson Brown, Taylor Materne and Caroline Says, authors of the YA novel The Upper Class will be on hand for a week long blog tour and people will be able to discuss and anticipate their novel, which is being released the first of September of this year. Current guest author is the great E.Lockhart, on hand until July 23rd. Other guest authors have included Cecil Castelucci, David Levithan, and John Green.

While you might mistake this as just another publishing-linked marketing blog full of hot-author-of-the-bestseller-list interviews and such, I was pleased to see that Book Divas is a bit more. Sure, HarperCollins has signed on for three additional Author Visits for 2007, and they pay, of course, but ten percent of the proceeds from all author visits go towards Book Divas’ ‘Writing Star’ scholarship fund! The scholarship fund will assist in sending one high school senior with the intent in majoring in Writing or English to college in the fall of 2008. Which is why the site also has great links to things like grammar help, book discussions, reviews and writing tips. Future English Major Divas, unite!

Ooh, had you heard about David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, who, as an experiment, took a mishmash of Austen chapters and passed them off as a book of his own work? He was shocked to find that most of the publishers to whom he sent the work didn’t recognize Austen’s voice – or some almost word-for-word theft of the first lines from Pride & Prejudice. (Oh, NEVER has such a case been made for people to read the book. Ignore Colin Firth. He’s not the best bit.) “It’s interesting that there are these filters that stop work getting through,” said another British Austen specialist. “Clearly clerks and office staff are rejecting these manuscripts offhand.”

I’m guessing that the expectation is that people are going to read this and blush with shame — and I would agree — for the Pride & Prejudice lines, at least, editors employed in a publishing office should feel at least a moment’s chagrin. But 19th century literature as a whole has a distinctive voice and feel of… dense antiquity. I’m sure many people sat and tried to dash through those first few paragraphs and said, “Wait. I’m not hooked by the first three pages. What is this tripe?” The rules have simply changed – whether for better or for worse is another question, and unless all publishing company mail room personnel and editorial assistants are now required to be English majors with a specialization in 19th c. lit, and/or British & American Literature as I was, and not, maybe, people just in need of work, or even marketing majors (which seems to largely be the trend), the shame-on-you finger-shaking here seems a bit… off. Thoughts?

Oh, hm. Apparently the New York Times has erred in treating the Deathly Hallows as just another book and have reviewed it before its release. Note: the SECOND link which includes the word ‘reviewed’ goes to that, if you don’t want to read about the book until you read the book: Don’t. Click. It. Though JK Rowling is apparently stormily displeased, most people can make the decision: to read or not to read. And look! The sky is still blue. (!)

As readers kick around the idea of what to do after the PotterPallooza, NPR has come up with a few suggestions. I’m sure there are others — I have heard tantalizing things about The Spellbook of Listen Taylor and quite a few new things to which I am looking forward. What’s on your ‘Gotta have it’ TBR stack?

CONTEST****CONTEST****CONTEST****ALERT!
When MotherReader does something, she does it WHOLEheartedly. We had a ‘Tell an Author/Illustrator You Care’ DAY, and she’s managed to bring the love for a full week. That’s totally one of my fave things about her. (She calls it an obsessive personality thing — I say, “Nah!”) Over at the site, she’s had a lot of love over the past few days, and has ended with an author interview with Caroline Hickey, and a contest to get a copy of the fabulous sounding book, Cassie Was Here. Go on over and find out how to get in the running!

And now, back to work: two more chapters of the expansion/revision and then… weeks of packing. Incidentally, if any of you know what to do on a six hour layover in Chicago at Union Station between four and ten p.m., let me know some ideas!)

Well, the good news is that I’ve only got two more chapters left in the Almighty Brain Consuming Expansion & Revision job. YAAAY! The bad news is that I have two brain cells left rubbing together. However, rubbing together, my brain cells have managed to produce a spark, so I shall point you to these bloggerly goodnesses with its feeble flickering flame:

Journalist Anastasia Goodstein, usually found on Ypulse, guest wrote a piece for The Huffington Post on young adults and their lack of news savvy. She cites Al Gore’s CurrentTV as a potential means to reaching this hard-to-reach demographic, and joins Harvard’s JKF School of Government in bemoaning the fact that fewer of the 13-20 demographic read the paper and are only interested in “soft news” like celebrity deaths and the imprisonment of certain famous-for-being-famous anorexics who shall not be named. I am always interested in the idea that young adults know less than ever before, when they have more access to information of all kinds — if they want it. They… don’t. At least not in the way it is aimed at them, flung at their heads, peppered at their ears, and heavily sugared up, dumbed down, and laced with entertainment and flashing lights (aka breathless, CNN moment-by-moment celebrity news: “She’s got her hairdresser with her… yes, that’s her stylist… and she’s… walking through the front gates of the minimum security facility where she has languished this last week… yes, she’s walking… and she’s out! Skinny Blonde Hotel Heiress Type is free!”) If young adults don’t watch the news it’s because the REAL entertainment stuff — stuff actually intended to be entertainment — is a lot more …um, entertaining.

I dunno — I read the comics for most of my life and drew cartoon bubbles on the Sears models in their bras until I was WELL into high school and should have been busily reading the Wall Street Journal, apparently. So, if a lot of young people don’t read the paper seriously … should the adults who do read the newspaper seriously worry? What about you and the newspaper? At what age do you figure people they supposed to start? It seems like this endless hand-wringing is another excuse for someone to start marketing yet another product/service/program to young adults… because, cynic that I am, I have a hard time with the idea that all of these people are worrying that young adults aren’t getting enough information to make “informed life choices.” I’m not sure I buy that at all.

Septimus Heap the book series will soon be — Septimus Heap, the Warner Brothers film. Well, for all of you fans of the series, begin crossing your fingers now. With the debacle that the movie formerly known as The Dark Is Rising, but which I will now call The Stench Is Rising has become, actual fans — that is, people who have read the books? Will need all the universe’s assistance they can get to have a movie in anywise remotely resembling the book that they loved and read. WHY. CAN’T. MOVIE. DIRECTORS. COMPREHEND. BOOKS?!

All right, I can tell the lights from ye olde brain cells are starting to spit sparks and die out. I’m sure I’ll have more cynical observations tomorrow. Until then…

Find out your Harry Potter personality at LiquidGeneration!

AHHH! I’m a teacher. A TEACHER!!!

Actually, this is the teacher from the Potter movies whom I love the best; I adore her as a frosty, snippish character – with a warm heart but a penchant for detail. And, I’ve been called the b-word as well as frosty and snippish before. I recall one of my students telling me once that “All you have to do is look at me, and I feel stupid!”

!!!

Thanks to ol’ Gilderoy Weasley over at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy for the fun.