HOLLY SCHINDLER BLOG TOUR STOP!!!

   


  Hi everyone!  Are you as excited as I am (which is extremely) for the next stop on Holly Schindler's blog tour for THE JUNCTION OF SUNSHINE AND LUCKY? 

Well, I'm really sorry I overslept this morning, but you need wait no longer.  My question to Holly was: "JUNCTION is all about found objects.  What are some of the things you've 'found' by writing each of your three published novels?"  And here's the link to Holly's wonderful vlog answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSN8NzEht5I&feature=c4-overview&list=UUEbR2dtGpLFbkhRZhNoWOoQ

     Please make sure to visit Holly's next blog stop tomorrow, at http://taffyscandy.blogspot.com!

     And by the way - you only have about 12 more hours to enter my giveaway contest for Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando's new YA novel, ROOMIES!  Get those entries in, folks!  You have nothing to lose and a pretty cool book to gain!

ROOMIES GIVEAWAY CONTEST

  

      I posted here last Sunday about having gone to a reading/signing for ROOMIES, by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando.  (But I don't think I mentioned what an awesome job I did driving into the Village, finding a great parking space, and hardly getting lost at all on my way to McNally-Jackson Bookstore.  Believe me, for someone with my lack of directional skills, this counts as a major accomplishment.)  I said in that post that I was going to run a giveaway contest as soon as I finished reading my own personalized first edition.  And do I keep my promises?  You'd better believe it.
     I'm not going to say very much about ROOMIES, because I want to offer whoever wins the book in this contest the chance to send me his/her own review so that I can post it here, with credits.  But I will say that if you don't win the book, you should buy it anyway, because it's delightful.  The word that's been running through my head when I think about ROOMIES is "bagatelle," but I wanted to make sure I was using it correctly in this context, so I looked it up in online dictionaries.  And guess what?  One of the Merriam-Webster definitions is, "a short literary or musical piece in light style."  I NAILED IT!  Other than the fact that, at 279 pages, ROOMIES probably doesn't qualify as "short,"  the word conveys what I meant to say, and pretty much what the authors were saying at the reading, which is: they wrote this book for fun, in between their more serious works.  They were playing.  Which is not to say that serious issues don't get touched on, or that serious things haven't happened or don't happen to the main characters, but the book is nonetheless written "in light style."  It's about the summer spent by two young women on opposite coasts who have just graduated high school, will be freshmen at Berkeley in the fall, and have learned that they've been assigned to share a dorm room.  They've never met, and they're about to live together.  Technically, until the very last line, Elizabeth and Lauren are not actually roomies; they are prospective roomies.  And, knowing the very little bit that I do about psychological theory, I would say that the situation puts them in the perfect position to serve as each other's transitional objects during this summer when everything is about to change.
     Okay! Enough of my blathering! ON TO THE CONTEST!!
     Here's how it goes: If you want to enter, leave a comment to this post describing the best or worst experience you've ever had with a roommate.  Pseudonyms are probably the way to go here, but otherwise, the more details, the better.  You don't have to have shared a dorm room with the roommate in question - he or she can have been a sibling, a bunkmate at camp, or a romantic partner whom you've since unfriended on Facebook. Post your comment between now and next Saturday, the 25th, at midnight East Coast time.  The winner I choose, no matter where s/he lives, will receive my almost-pristine autographed copy of ROOMIES.  And by the way, if you show me proof that you've linked to this blog post in any form of social media, I will think of you kindly when it comes to judging entries.
     Ready... set...  GO!!

NEXT BOOK GIVEAWAY IS ON DECK!

     Yes, I've acquired an autographed first edition that I'm going to (1) read, and then (2) give away to some lucky contest winner.  Just got back an hour ago from my jaunt into Manhattan to hear co-authors Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando read from and talk about their new YA novel, ROOMIES (Little, Brown, December 2013) at McNally Jackson Bookstore.  (I didn't get a photo, but Farrin Jacobs did; see tweet @farrinj.) Here are some things I learned about the novel and the process that produced it.   There are two main characters, both of whom have just learned that they've been assigned to share a dorm room two  months hence when they'll be starting their freshman years at Berkeley. Authors Sara and Tara (doesn't that sound like a pair of twins whom their mother dresses identically, virtually ensuring that they'll end up in therapy?) each assumed responsibility for one of the characters.  Elizabeth in New Jersey (Tara) and Lauren in San Francisco (Sara) narrate alternating chapters, and each chapter includes at least one side of an ongoing e-mail exchange between the two.  What I found fascinating is that the _ara Sisters did not really collaborate while writing the book.  Instead, one would finish writing her own chapter, email it to the other _ara, and then wait for the next chapter to be emailed back.  They didn't really discuss the process along the way.  Each trusted the other enough to follow wherever she might lead.  Each had other "front-burner" book projects going the whole time, and they were having fun writing ROOMIES and didn't take this back-burner project too seriously until it was done.  That's when they sat back and appraised it and lo, they saw that it was good.  So they revised, and then sent it to their respective agents.  And lo, the agents saw that it was good, and Little, Brown saw that it was good.  And the rest of the story isn't history yet, because the book has just been released.
     I've reviewed Sara's THE LUCY VARIATIONS here, and I mentioned her again here.  I'm a great admirer of her writing.  I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of Tara until tonight, but as I've now learned here, she's the author of quite a few well-received YA novels.  Her most recent, THE BEST NIGHT OF YOUR (PATHETIC) LIFE, was published by Dutton in 2012, and her next out will be THE BATTLE OF DARCY LANE (Running Press Kids, April 2014). 
     So this is a teaser.  Now there are two fabulous events to watch out for here: the ROOMIES giveaway, after I've finished reading it, and on January 25th, the Holly Schindler vlogstop.
    
HEY, KIDS!!  DO WE HAVE FUN HERE AT TAONGP, OR WHAT????