E. Lockhart's Blog, page 11

Real Live Boyfriends is up for Best YA Fiction over at Good Reads. Look at the awesome competitors. Go vote! 

[image error]

2011 Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Best Young Adult Fiction
Vote now for your favorite books!

Sara Zarr is my pal and one of the best YA authors around. I especially love Story of a Girl, which was a National Book Award finalist, but Sweethearts is awesome too and I am very psyched to read How to Save A Life, which is about teen pregnancy, family, jealousy, joy -- LIFE. It's told in two narrators, and Zarr (or THE ZARR, as I like to call her) is amazing at getting the specific rhythms of people's speech. 

I interviewed her, below, with shortie questions and shortie answers that reveal a lot, I think!  But if you want a more in-depth interview, check out this one at Forever Young Adult. 

 

Okay, Zarr. Shortie answers, one sentence!!

1. You live in Utah. Give me a bit of local slang. (I am a fan of local slang)

"What the crap?" (When confounded. Favorite use: when a previously undiscovered species of fish was discovered in a nearby lake, the fish and game guy who was interviewed for the local news said, "I saw it, and I was like, what the crap?!")

2. Favorite snack while writing?

 In my dreams: M&Ms. In reality: Raw almonds.

 3. Favorite swear word?

 Crap. (I HAVE been in Utah eleven years...)

 4. Tell me a book that gave you  nightmares, or a recommendation for All Hallows Read.

I read THE AMITYVILLE HORROR when I was in junior high, I think. Terrible idea.

5. Give me a sentence from How to Save a Life.

 "It's fairly easy to stalk someone when you've dated him for almost two years."

  

6. A great teen book you read recently.

TIGHTER by Adele Griffin.

 7. A word of wisdom about family, or the families we make for ourselves, which is the topic of your book. 

 We're all in this together and mostly doing the best we can. So have some compassion, including for yourself.

 8. You were just on the Smart Chicks book tour with Melissa Marr and Jennifer Lynn Barnes, among others. Describe them each in a word.

I would like to describe them both in two words:
1) Hair 2) Brains

9. What made you laugh this week?

My husband said, "There's not one Paul McCartney song you can throw at me that I can't sing in Carol Channing's voice." And, he was right.

10. Can you give me the movie pitch version of How to Save a Life? Camp it up, if you like, or do it straight.

Juno meets Steel Magnolias, with no dying at the end. And also not in the South. So actually not that much like Steel Magnolias except there are a bunch of awesome women, and one of them has some pretty big hair.

Also you can win a video chat with Sara Zarr for your book club in this sweepstakes!  

 

 

The Emily Jenkins newsletter is out. Click here to read it online. Click here to subscribe. (At bottom of page). It includes tour dates in October for Toys Come Home.

My good friend, bestselling author Lauren Myracle rocks on with her bad self for Banned Books Week at the LA Times. It is very funny and also very serious.

Check out this great list of books about bullying. The Boyfriend List is on it. (By the way, Invisible Inkling, under Jenkins, is about bullying too.)

And this excellent list of YA books for the theater lover -- which includes Dramarama. I want to read them all! (Well, I have read half of them already -- but I want to read the rest.) Jazz hands!

When I am not cleaning up cat barf and over-caffeinating and sweating through power yoga class that is really freaking hard -- I occasionally put on an outfit and go somewhere glam. Last week I went to Maureen Johnson's book launch party for The Name of the Star, which I am so psyched to read.  More about the event on the Figment blog. 

Anyway, I went with Sarah Mlynowski and David Levithan. It was author-packed, but also reader and librarian packed as well. We lost David pretty quickly to a hoard of nerdfighter Will Grayson Will Grayson fans, but Sarah and I tried to get snacks before they were permitted, and the nice Books of Wonder staff let us have wine. But NOT cupcakes. There were juiceboxes, too, natch. 

Maureen looked beautiful () and was extremely funny. What's more she gave out YA Saves T-shirts (which you can buy here  at my web-designer's awesome site -- and 100% of MJ's proceeds, about $8 a shirt, go to Reading is Fundamental) and you got MJ fridge magnets with every book purchase. The best kind of swag.

At one point, Maureen called out to me and said, "E. Lockhart, how bad was your writing when you first started?"  -- apropos of her advice to writers, which is essentially "Dare to SUCK"  -- watch the video here.

Anyway, I was taken aback and just yelled "Really really bad" -- which is true. I agree with Maureen's advice about suckage, completely. 

Anyway, it was a really fun night. Now back to, you know, cat barf and writing. 

xo

E

 
At the Baltimore Book Festival (thanks to Susane for the photo!) -- here in order of height (shorter to taller) you see:

Maryrose Wood, Sarah Mlynowski, me, Susane Colasanti and Joanna Pearson. 

You can't tell, but Joanna and I are wearing the SAME SKIRT, hers in brown, mine in gray. 
We had fun. It was pouring rain. I revealed myself to be bitter, sarcastic and full of bile -- but possibly in a good way. Thanks to everyone who came out, and to these women of YA for being such fun conversationalists.  

Over at The Millions, an article all about Ruby's Doctor Z! Well, only kind-of. But it is all about therapy in YA fiction, and uses Roo's definitions as a way of structuring the essay, in part, and talks about The Boyfriend List at some length. 

Also, lots of people have emailed or tweeted me about the cover to Esther Freud's Lucky Break, which comes out in the USA in October. (It's British. Freud is a seriously respected novelist, author of Hideous Kinky which was a film with Kate Winslet, and she's related to Lucien and Sigmund and lots of other interesting Freuds.)

The answer is that yes, they can do that. The image is a stock photo. That means that a photographer has it represented through a stock agency, and publishers (or others) can buy rights to use it. Those rights aren't exclusive.  Then they can manipulate it (you can see the cover designer for Dramarama tinted it). 

It's not surprising that such a lovely dressing room photo was chosen by two designers for very similar books.  Lucky Break is about three drama school students in London, and the way their fortunes pan out over 14 years. Here's an excellent review from The Guardian. I am dying to read it. And here, if you don't know it yet, is all the scoop on Dramarama, which is the most autobiographical of my books. 

A bit of inside news: The black line across the girl's face on the cover of Dramarama was put there at my request. Sadye in the novel has a large, distinctive nose. The model's nose was so obviously not that -- I felt that seeing her nose made it impossible to believe she was my character.

Scroll down to see my tour dates for Toys Come Home. 

Happy Fall!
XO
E 

Sept 20th I'll be at NAIBA (bookseller conference) -- and if you're there I hope you will come by and see me. I'm there to do "author speed-dating" and chat about school visits.

Sept 23rd and 24th I'm at the Baltimore Book Festival  -- and yowza!  Friday evening, after headliner Libba Bray speaks (and I have heard her many times -- always incredibly funny) -- I am on a panel with:
Sarah Mlynowski
Maryrose Wood
Susane Colasanti 
Joanna Pearson 

You know there will be hijinks. Then on Saturday I am on a middle-grade panel to discuss Invisible Inkling and Toys Come Home etc. (see below if you don't know the scoop on that stuff) -- with Troy Howell, Rachel Wildavsky, Elissa Brent Weissman, and Maryrose Wood. 

Then in later October, I am going on tour for Toys Come Home (written as Emily Jenkins). Here are the events, as I know them now. Most of them are with my illustrator, Caldecott-winner Paul O. Zelinsky. Please come out and see me!

 

Tuesday, October 18: Haverford, PA
school events and stock signing, Children's Book World 

Wednesday, October 19: Madison, WI
Wisconsin Book Festival with Paul O. Zelinsky

October 22-23: Austin, TX
Texas Book Festival, with Paul O. Zelinsky

Thursday, October 20: Naperville, IL
7:00 pm: Anderson's Bookstore with Paul O. Zelinsky

Friday, October 21: Naperville, IL
school visits  courtesy of Anderson's Bookstore

Saturday, October 22: Austin, TX
Texas Book Festival with Paul O. Zelinsky

Monday, October 24: Petaluma, CA
Copperfield's bookstore: school visits and in-store event with Paul O. Zelinsky

Tuesday, October 25: Menlo Park, CA
Kepler's Books: school visits and in-store event with Paul O. Zelinsky

Wednesday, Oct 26: Seattle, Washington
School events with Third Place Books

Thursday, Oct 27th: Seattle, Washington
Village Books: school events and 5pm in-store event

November 12: Shelburne, VT
Flying Pig Bookstore, daytime in-store event with Paul O. Zelinsky

xo

E

 

Toys Come Home, written under the name Emily Jenkins, comes out today. Preview it here.  It's for 5-10 year-olds, and it's the third in the series that started with Toys Go Out -- but it's a prequel, so you could read it first if you want to.

Happy Fall!

XOE

"Who could imagine the introduction of a self-conscious stingray could lead to such great things?... This enjoyable trio deserves its rightful place away from the confines of any toy chest."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review 

"The empathetic characters, gentle drama, and occasional, full-page, black-and-white drawings create a timeless story of adventure and friendship to treasure aloud or independently. Wholly satisfying, this may well leave readers expecting to see the Velveteen Rabbit peeking in the bedroom window and smiling approvingly." 
—School Library Journal, starred review 

 

 

Look! It's the promo video for Uncommon Criminals, which came out in late June. I loved Heist Society, so am very psyched for this next book, from Ally Carter who wrote the Gallagher Girls books. 

 

 

Now that you've had your entertainment for the day, I will just tell you what I'm up to.  This month my new picture book, Small Medium Large (written as Emily Jenkins) hits stores.

It's a great title for elementary teachers as it's full of amusing vocabulary and it's all about relative sizes! Here's a link where you can look inside the book at Tomek Bogacki's awesome illustrations.

Then Toys Come Home comes out Sept 13th -- and in October Paul O. Zelinsky and I are going on tour to support it. It's the third in the series that started with Toys Go Out - now called the Toys Trilogy! 

Sorry no Lockhart books for a little while longer. I have been busy busy busy, writing, writing, writing -- just not on the book I am supposed to be writing. My agent is like, "you are avoiding something!" -- and it's true. But then, I have written entire novels procrastinating other projects. My first and second published books were written trying to avoid my dissertation. 

Now I am off on a family holiday for a week, so I can legitimately not write. Then I will behave myself, I swear!

I am reading The Magician King by Lev Grossman on vacation. If you haven't read The Magicians yet, you must.  You will love, love, love it. (But it is an adult book with some adult-type language and situations.) Anyway, I am an adult and I am really into it. I read half of the Magician KIng in ARC form on loan from novelist Robin Wasserman, author of Skinned, Crashed and Wired --  but I kept it too long and other people were bugging Robin to read the ARC, so I had to give it back unfinished. Then my local indie didn't have it, and I ordered it, and it didn't come in on time!

Then it came in last night, and I made a special trip to get it, and I have it in my bag for delicious reading. 

Happy August.

xo

E

The How To Be Bad eBook promo (in earlier blog post) is over. But we sold a ton and I am so happy our book reached all those new readers! 

I am in a coffee shop. I am supposed to be writing but I am kind of STUCK. I always get stuck about halfway through a book.

This time, halfway through the book I went to LA for three weeks, crashed the car three times (just fender benders, no one hurt), went to the Magic Castle, had my wallet stolen, had two amusing actor encounters, even got a little inside scoop on the Rock of Ages movie (!!!! you know I can't wait. Roo's dad can't wait, either...) and generally felt like I had a proper beachy touristy Los Angeles experience. 

I also watched more TV than usual. There was cable at the place I was staying. Usually, I don't have cable. Do you know what? So Random on the Disney Channel is really hilarious. I am also into iCarly now. The Fred episode from season two really won me over, where they throw all these talking cabbages. Here's the promo for that episode.
 
And did you know novelist Jennifer Weiner has a sitcom on ABC Family? It's called State of Georgia and stars Raven Symoné. Clip! 

In other news, here is a great librarian article about why you should read YA and what the heck YA is -- by someone who actually understands it very very well.

xo
E 

 

Cheapy cheap eBook!

Now for a SHORT time, my novel How to Be Bad is only $1.99 in eBook format from BN. (We hope it'll be available at indies and elsewhere, soon, but for now, this is it.) 

If you like Frankie, you'll like Vicks. Promise. She's a kick-butt younger sister of like, six older brothers (could be five, I can't remember) -- who takes off with her two best friends on a Florida road trip to hunt down a guy who's doing her wrong.  

I co-wrote this book with Sarah Mlynowski & Lauren Myracle. How to Be Bad is three times the fun, cause it's all three of us together!  Yippee!  

Cheesy to say, I know. But true!

Sarah's new book is Ten Things We Did, and Lauren's new one is Shine.

Ten Things is hilarious and RACY and all about what happens when two girls are living alone without parents for junior year of high school. Shine is southern gothic -- a stunning, disturbing mystery about a horrific hate crime and the way it affects the victim's oldest friend. And lookie! Here is a video we made together about the book! It has ridiculous footage of our tour hijinks, also.

Anyway, here's that linkie to the eBook again. $1.99.