Saturday, January 16, 2010

Winner for Freaksville ARC!

Kitty emailed me last night with the lucky winner of a brand new Freaksville ARC....and that would be.....

WENDY

Congrats Wendy! Please email Kitty at: kittykeswick@comcast.net Don't forget to include your address and Freaksville will be coming your way.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Friday, January 15, 2010

The Digital Age of Books and Music

First off, welcome to our new followers! Once we hit 60, we will be giving away a book to one lucky follower! Next, an update to our follower free book contest from when we hit 30! I never heard from the original winner, so our NEW winner of Justine Larbalestier's Liar is...

Pagecrawler!

Please email me your address at YAedge @ yahoo.com (without the spaces) by Wednesdsay, January 20th! Congrats!

Now on to our regularly scheduled post:

I don't know about you, but I have a obsession regarding my bookshelf. All books have their place and when I get new ones, I hate to see them pile up without a proper home. It takes constant shifting to get the right thickness and height all in order, along with subject/genre. I'm never happy with the arrangement and each time I walk into our studio, I have to fight myself to walk over and start pulling books of the shelf to reorganize them. Where do you put your Maureen Johnson hardbacks and paperbacks? Do you put them together or do the hardbacks go with others of their kind? Or how about those odd sized books that don't seem to fit anywhere? I'm the crazy that puts hardbacks with hardbacks, trade paperback with other trades and mass with mass paperbacks. The odd shaped/sized ones?...don't even get me started.

Growing up, I had this same situation with CDs, but it was a bit easier. I would alphabetize them by singer/group and then within that, by date of the album. Obsessive? Yes. But, I could almost name every CD I owned because of this. Over time, as I've gotten older, my CDs now sit in huge folders. Once digital download became big, I was less obsessed with keeping track of my collection. I still buy real CDs from time to time at used stores or of the groups/singers I really love, but most of the time I just download the album instantly. Why not? I can buy a CD from the comfort of my home, sitting with my cats on my lap, my dog at my feet and a glass of wine on the table next to me. I can even wear my pajamas!

You're probably wondering where this post is going. As I mentioned last month, I bought Barnes and Noble's new ereader, nook. It is my jump into the digital age of books, one I fought for so long. I LOVE reading on it (one thing I wasn't sure about when I ordered it), but I have SOO many "real" books on my shelf! I am rotating, reading one "real" book, then an ebook and so on.

It makes me wonder, at some point will I want to stop organizing my bookshelf like a madwoman and just turn on my nook and let it do the dirty work for me? I think the answer will always be "no". I love ebooks right now, but they AREN'T the same as cracking open a new or old book, smelling the ink and paper and turning the pages one by one. Like my CDs, I will always buy my favorite books/authors as "real" books, and possibly also in ebook because it's great to know that I'm always carrying around a good friend (umm, I mean book) in my purse. I love walking into a bookstore and seeing people cracked open to a page or carrying a huge stack around ready to buy. To me, books will always be around in some kind of paper format, at least one can hope!

How do you organize your books and if you have an ereader, how do you handle reading "real" books vs. your ebooks?

Sunday, January 10, 2010

YAedge Feature Author: Kitty Keswick

This is more than the usual promo for an up and coming YA author. Kitty has been a loyal critique partner for me and Tami for about two years. We've struggled through chapters together, supported each other through the dramas of the real world, and through it all we've grown to appreciate our unique writing skills and just who to Skype with to help fix the current plot crisis. So how cool it was to invite Kitty on YAedge as a featured author and help celebrate her debut novel? VERY. Onto the questions!

Kitty, you're a self-professed Anglophile, and recently went on a dream trip to the UK. What was the most unexpected thing you discovered?

Roundabouts are really confusing! I had my own Chevy Chase National Lampoon experience in Edinbourgh. We drove around and around and around before we figured out how to get off.




Best experience: Seeing Caeverlock Castle in Scotland was like going home. I’ve spent ten plus years researching the Maxwells and even used their story in Freaksville. But be careful--those castles had really small and steep stairs with no rails! If your middle name isn’t grace, like me, the winding spirals in stone can be dangerous.


Not only do you write about furry beasties, but also you live with one! Can you tell us about him? (perhaps a pic of Jensen, too?!)

Jensen’s my gray tabby. Yes, he’s named after Jensen Ackles from Supernatural. I’m shameless. No, I’ve never met his namesake. Dreamsville.

You're very good at building sexual tension between your characters - makes your writing steamy! lol...

I am? (Tracy and Tami are my critique partners so they’ve seen my stuff in the rough stages.)Wow, thanks. I like conflict and I like pairing opposites. But they have to have enough common ground—too different and you don’t get sparks, you get embers, as in crash and burn, baby.

You've often said you love House of Night, the PC Cast & Kristin Cast series. If you could ask the mother/daughter writing duo anything about the books, what would it be?

Well, I do write with another YA author, Judith Graves (Under My Skin). Do you know her? ;) So I guess I would want to know who wrote what part. LOL. Judith’s and my voice meld really well and so do PC and Kristin’s. It would be interesting to see how their internal plotting sessions work.

Have you bought a drum kit yet? Tami plays bass, I play guitar and sing..... Man, let's go on the road!

Nope. I’ve got my eye on a snare drum and stand. I’m saving for it. It has practice pads so I won’t tick off the neighbors. I hope to buy it as my Freaksville-finally-released-and-now-the-fun-starts present. But wouldn’t that be cool?? Three YA authors in a band. YA edge is even a great name.

We often discuss the backstory of our characters, things only we, the authors, know, but they often affect the choices our characters make. Can you share a few backstory secrets about your main characters: Kasey, Josh and Gillie?

Hmm… good question. Backstory is so important.



Josh Johnstone is always in his older brother’s shadow. He likes the outdoors and hates lifts because he was stuck in one when he was young. Tight spaces….not a good thing. He sometimes feels as if his wolf will rip out of him at any moment. You’ll learn more about Josh as the series progresses. (Illustration of Josh by artist Val Cox, as he appears in Freaksville.)

Gillie Godshall has to be prepared for everything, because failure isn’t an option in the Godshall household. She’s a pack rat and carries a massive amount of stuff in her bag; you never know when trouble will show its face. She has big shoes to fill, and she can’t tell her BFF Kasey. You’ll learn her secret in the next book, Furry & Freaked.

Kasey, the heroine, would rather be a fashion writer for Glamour than see visions. Unfortunately, her DNA is freaked.

Thanks for hanging with us, Kitty. Congrats again on your January 8th release and may you never be at a loss for words. ;)

Find out more about Kitty at her website. She's been all over the book blogging community lately, if you see another interview, be sure to say "hi". Kitty's also a member of the Class of 2k10, watch for announcements about New York appearences/group book signings during Book Expo America in May.

Kitty's publisher is giving away a copy of Freaksville on the Leap Books Blog. Read an excerpt - I'm warning you, it's HOT, then comment to win!


NEWSFLASH: Kitty has just informed us she'd love to do an ARC giveaway right here on YAedge. Sooooo....comment on this post to enter and she'll do a draw on Friday for a winner. That's two chances you now have to win Freaksville! Ain't you guys lucky? ;)