Joy Preble's Blog, page 24

This weekend I was in Austin for Kick it Up a Notch, the Austin SCBWI Regional Conference. Let me say that a good and productive time was had by all and I got to hang with not only the Houston folks who drove up for the conference but also my Austin peeps (who say that I am an honorary Austin girl now, which makes me smile happily and vow to keep myself weird along with Austin).

A few pics:
Jessica Lee Anderson, me, Jo Whittemore, Cory Putnam Oakes the ever fabulous genius Cynthia Leitich Smith
Tricia Hoover, who can sell books and cookies all at once
Outgoing Austin SCBWI RA Debbie Gonzales, who is generous and brilliant and one of my favorite humans!
Nikki Loftin, eating grapes... just because.

The Houston Crew!

Tomorrow is the official launch day for WHO DONE IT, the February book for Soho Teen, edited by Jon Scieszka and with a cast of 83 authors including yours truly! Please stop by to find out more. Including info on the WHO DONE IT event that's upcoming on 2/23 at Murder by the Book here in Houston.

And Wednesday, I'm interviewing Cynthia Leitich Smith, whose new YA paranormal, FERAL NIGHTS is also out tomorrow!!

It's a big week here on the blog.
Plus Valentine's Day. Which I'm honestly neutral about but no one's perfect, right?

One of the best things about being an author is getting to hang out with other authors and readers and bloggers and librarians at book festivals like last weekend's Montgomery County Book Festival, right here in The Woodlands, Texas.

I have a tender spot for this festival: it was the first 'big' festival to which I was invited to appear in January of 2010, a few months after DREAMING ANASTASIA came out in September '09. I was thrilled! And sharing the stage with Melissa Marr and Sarah Zarr and Cassandra Clare, among others. Crazy wonderful! Of course what I never anticipated is that the morning before that Friday author dinner on that January day in 2010, I would have had a neck biopsy that would confirm that I had thyroid cancer. Let us just say that my 'most exciting moment' became a 'deer in the headlight' moment, at least in my head. In public I was smiling. Inside my head, I was freaking. In the end, it turned out okay: surgery, treatment, meds, and now a patient for life because once you go down that road, that's what you have to do even if they say you're cured. They want to be sure it sticks. But it left me with the clear understanding that life can give you the great and the sucky all in one day. I had known this, but after that I KNEW IT in a different and deeper sense.

Which is all to say that I had the best time last weekend -- having fun, meeting new authors, not worrying about biopsies. It was grand. I shared the THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT with    wonderful moderator  Jen Bigheart and amazing authors Lisa McMann, Kendare Blake, Mary Lindsey, and newcomer Victoria Scott, who is going to blow you all away with her debut series THE COLLECTOR and its bad boy Dante Walker this spring! I talked to amazing readers. I laughed and ate good food and yeah, there were some adult beverages involved. It was perfect and I am thankful for the hard work of librarians Tabatha Perry and Natasha Benway and everyone else who made this HUGE event with 40 authors go so smoothly, including McKenna and John and the Murder by the Book gang who ran the bookstore and even finagled Random House into sending at early shipment of this:
This is the WHO DONE IT anthology that will be out on 2/12!! Here is how it looked at the MCBF13 bookstore:
I'll be signing copies and reading from WDI on 2/23 at 4:30 at Murder by the Book in Houston. More on that on Tuesday 2/12 when it officially launches!

As for the rest of the festival, here's some of went on:
Jen Bigheart, me, Victoria Scott, Lisa McMann, Mary Lindsey, Kendare Blake
Greg Leitich Smith and Janet Fox talking important book talk My Austin sweeties: Bethany Hegedus and Cynthia Leitich Smith Janet Fox and Sophie Jordan Bettina Restrepo, Emily Anderson, Corey Putnma Oaks
Kandare Blake and me (Love her Anna Dressed in Blood!)
Lisa McMann and I have cornered the market on leopard. That's what Maria Cari Soto thinks. Also Jo Whittemore!
Cheers!
me and Maria Cari Soto and Jo again --

So let's catch up!


1. Where have I been lately? Well, I flew to Portland, OR, where I was the guest author at Book Fan Friday at Powell's Book Store, suburb branch, where I talked about fairy tales in YA and in the DREAMING ANASTASIA series here:

And I saw my books in the downtown Powell's here:
After which I did a panel on time travel in YA at another fab indie called Annie Blooms with authors Emily Whitman and Ruth Feldman.

And then I visited some other wonderful bookstores including Green Bean Books where you can disguise yourself by purchasing:
Which I think is totally awesome!!
And then I flew home, changing planes both there and back in Las Vegas, which let me say is NOTHING like the Portland airport.
The Vegas airport is all SLOT MACHINES!!! and the Portland airport is all HOLISTIC MASSAGE CENTER. It is very different when you visit both in the same two hour period!

2. A couple days later, I did some school visits here in Houston at both Garcia Middle School and Christa McAuliffe Middle School, teaching writing and revision and again talking about fairy tale retellings in YA and pop culture to the 7th graders. It was awesome fun, especially when I arrived at Garcia Middle School to discover that the art students had PAINTED PICTURES OF MY BOOK COVERS!!


Which was totally cool!

3. After that, I drove to Austin to the Cedar Park Library, where 15 girls plus the librarians had read DREAMING ANASTASIA and each had a book! We discussed and ate candy and I tossed out prizes like candy and matryoshka doll lip gloss and a good time was had by all! And then I went to have lunch and plot world Texas author domination with PJ Hoover and gave her this:


4. This coming Saturday, 2/2, I will be at the Montgomery County Teen Book Festival at Lone Star College in The Woodlands Texas. My panel is THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT, moderated by the fabulous librarian Jen Bigheart with not only me, but also Kendare Blake, Lisa McMann, Mary Lindsey and Victoria Scott! Can you imagine how excited I am?!

5. And this month, I will also be in a mystery anthology that's coming out from my publisher, Soho Press:
I will be signing and talking about this book, which as you can see, has a lot of FAMOUS PEOPLE IN IT!!, at the wonderful Murder by the Book in Houston, on 2/23 at 4:30. Disguises optional!!

See my appearances page for more info on any and all events!!

More soon.
Including plans for THE SWEET DEAD LIFE!!

You are all worthy of the lone SWEET DEAD LIFE arc.
All of you!!
But the Contest Hat picked only one.
And the winner of the arc of THE SWEET DEAD LIFE from Soho Teen is.........
drumroll please........

Precious from @fragments of life

Precious!! Please email me at joypreble at gmail dot com and let me know where to send.

You are also all worthy of TSDL postcards, but the Contest Hat has declared that Madeline Wilson absolutely will get two signed SWEET DEAD LIFE postcards if she also emails me at the above address and tells me where to send. Cause the Contest Hat said her answer made her laugh. (yes, the Contest Hat is a female, in case anyone was wondering)

This is what is coming out from SOHO PRESS on May 14th! 
Guardian angels with a Texas twist. Mystery. Bad habits. Aggie football philosophy. Bad guys. Breakfast tacos. Kissing. And a feisty narrator named Jenna Samuels.
Fallen meets Veronica Mars meets Pineapple Express.
I LOVE this book. And there will be a sequel next year!


"I found out two things today: One, I think I'm dying. And two, my brother is a perv."

So begins the diary of 14-year-old Jenna Samuels, who is having a very bad eighth-grade year. Her single mother spends all day in bed. Dad vanished when she was eight. Her sixteen-year-old brother, Casey, tries to hold together what's left of the family by working two after-school jobs—difficult, as he's stoned all the time. To make matters worse, Jenna is sick. When she collapses one day, Casey tries to race her to the hospital in their beat-up Prius and crashes instead.

Jenna wakes up in the ER to find Casey beside her. Beatified. Literally. The flab and zits? Gone. Before long, Jenna figures out that Casey didn't survive the accident at all. He's an "A-word." (She can't bring herself to utter the truth.) Soon they discover that Jenna isn't just dying; she's being poisoned. And Casey has been sent back to help solve the mystery that not only holds the key to her survival, but also to their mother's mysterious depression and father's disappearance.


And I have ONE ARC to give away!! Just one. Plus a Sweet Dead Life postcard, also signed.

If you would like to win the Advanced Reading Copy of THE SWEET DEAD LIFE and read it before everyone else -- and hopefully love it as much as I do-- please enter in the Comments section. I will keep this contest open until Monday 1/21 and announce the winner on Tuesday 1/22.

And the winner of the autographed copy of THEN YOU WERE GONE by Lauren Strasnick is Michelle!!

Congrats, Michelle!!

Lauren or I will contact you soon about your book!


Tomorrow --- my trip to Portland.

Coming soon: A SWEET DEAD LIFE contest!

Today I’m welcoming Lauren Strasnick, author of two of my favorite YA books: Nothing Like You and Her and Me and You, and now her third: Then You Were Gone, a noir-ish YA mystery that I am anxious to dive into. Lauren’s style just blows me away (which you will see we discuss below) and she is also serious the coolest, hippest most ‘LA’ girl that I know. Our mutual agent, the fabulous Jen Rofe confirms this. Just wander a thrift shop in Studio City with her and watch how everything looks perfect on her and you will see what I mean. Plus she is brilliant and ironic and made of awesome.
Me, Jen Rofe and Lauren StrasnickSo awesome, that at the end of this post, she is giving away a SIGNED COPY OF THEN YOU WERE GONE!! So make sure to enter below!
But first, Lauren and I sat down, laptop to laptop, to discuss her new book, which Amazon describes like this:
Two years ago, Adrienne’s best friend walked out of her life. One week ago, she left Adrienne a desperate, muffled voicemail. Adrienne never called back. Now Dakota is missing. She left behind a string of broken hearts, a flurry of rumors, and a suicide note. Adrienne can’t stop obsessing over what might have happened if she’d answered Dakota’s call. And she’s increasingly convinced that Dakota must still be alive. Maybe finding and saving Dakota is the only way Adrienne can save herself. Or maybe it’s too late for them both.Joy:  THEN YOU WERE GONE is a noir mystery, yes? Tell us what drew you to this story genre.
Lauren: I was definitely inspired by the noir/neo-noir genre -- though I'm not sure I succeeded in writing anything that even remotely resembles it. I pulled inspiration from a few different sources: Twin Peaks, Veronica Mars, the movie Brick (this hard-boiled teen detective story about a dead chick and block of heroin). I'm very into the "missing girl" trope used so often in fiction and film, and I was eager to see what I could do with it.
Joy: Friendship and relationships -- both good, bad, and obsessive/destructive play a big role in your novels. Tell us about Adrienne and her friendship with the missing Dakota.
Lauren: It's true. I've yet to write a novel that doesn’t include a heavy dash of obsession &/or destructive friendship! Well, at the start of this book, Adrienne and Dakota, former friends, have been broken up for nearly two years. In that time, Dakota has sort of skyrocketed to teen idol status -- she's in a band, they're quite popular, and Adrienne is just a regular girl with a reasonable life. Adrienne envies Dakota. And when Dakota goes missing, Adrienne is forced to come to terms with the realities of who she is, who Dakota was, and who they were together.
Joy: The down and dirty: What's your one or two sentence pitch for this novel?
Lauren: THEN YOU WERE GONE is about friends dumping friends! It has mystery, intrigue, sex, love, heartbreak and rock music!
Joy: I know you live in LA so obviously you know it well, but beyond that, what elements attract you to setting stories there?
Lauren: LA is wildly misunderstood. This city is so much more than silicone and sandy beaches. It's mountains & succulents and street food and bougainvillea and cold nights and cheap wine and citrus trees!
Joy: I love this answer so hard!! It is exactly why I love your books, Lauren. Because you define LA in this way.
Joy: One of the things I love most about your writing is your spare, elegant prose. I am in awe of how you let the white space also tell the story. Tell us about your stylistic choices when you write dialogue, description, narration.
Lauren: I actually feel very limited by my style at times -- I don't really feel i'm making choices. It's like -- each sentence has a rhythm, and i have to find the right words to fit the beat. It's annoying & limiting -- frequently i'll feel like, "I have this bit of information i need to convey but i can't figure out how to say it so it sounds right." & then i'll spend half an hour trying to work out the right way to say something so it doesn't offend my sensibilities.
Joy: For the writers out there, what is your general writing process? Do you outline or just see where the story leads you?
Lauren: NOTHING LIKE YOU, my first book, is the only book i didn't outline. Everything else I've outlined. Not to say that the story doesn't change sometimes while writing, but writing a novel is challenging enough -- the least you can do is provide yourself with some sort of road map.
Joy: THEN YOU WERE GONE has been widely compared to Jay Asher's 13 Reasons Why. What elements trigger that comparison?
Lauren: I'm not entirely sure -- both are dark, contemporary reads, both touch on suicide, both books center around an MC who's fixated on a girl who's gone -- beyond that though, the stories & themes are quite different.
Joy: What's next for Lauren Strasnick?
Lauren: I've envisioned a very thrilling future for myself! Am currently working on a proposal for a top secret project... Will keep you posted, JP.
Lightning Round:
1. Chocolate or vanilla?
Both, together.
2. Coffee or tea?
Tea.
3. Favorite guilty pleasure TV show?
The Bachelor/Bachelorette/Bachelor Pad franchise. No guilt!
4. Books you'd take to the proverbial desert island?
The Basic Eight, Wonder Boys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, My Life in Heavy Metal, The Haunting of Hill House, The Likeness, The Secret History, anything Didion...
5. Last meal?
Morbid! How's about Favorite Meal(s)? Truffle mac & cheese, Kale salad, some sort of rice/beans/fried plantains/chicken mix -- spaghetti squash casserole, apples & peanut butter, steak fries w/ tartar sauce, cabbage salad, fried clams, kimchi, any kind of pickled veg...
Joy’s note: Okay, I am really hungry now. Yum. On all counts. Also, I thought I was the only one who secretly dipped fries in tartar sauce. Guess not.
6. Current favorite LA haunt?
I really love wandering the aisles of health food stores.

AND NOW FOR THE CONTEST/GIVEAWAY!!
To win an autographed copy of THEN YOU WERE GONE, comment on this post, making sure that we know how to contact you. Since Lauren shared her favorite meals and book choices above, tell her your favorite meal or desert island books. Then your name will be put in the contest hat! Contest will last until Monday 1/14 and winner will be announced on Tuesday 1/15.
Start entering!! And read Lauren’s other two books!!
Want more about Lauren?Go to her website: www.laurenstrasnick.com

Happy 2013!
Yes, it has taken me 8 days into the year to get to this post.
But whatever.

At the end of 2012, I talked about goals. And now here we are in 2013.
And so I present:

Stuff I'm looking forward to in 2013: ( a very partial list)

1. My trip later this week to Portland, OR for Book Fan Friday at Powell's, where we will talk about fairy tales in YA and do some writing and then to Annie Bloom's on 1/12 for the Time Travel Troika with authors Emily Whitman and Ruth Feldman, moderated by author Rosanne Parry. Plus it's Portland. The Pacific Northwest. Love it.

2. The WHO DONE IT mystery anthology from Soho Press in February. All proceeds go to 826nyc. I am the least famous person in this book, but that makes it even better.  Plus the cover rocks.

3. THE SWEET DEAD LIFE, on May 14th, also from Soho Press. I'm beyond excited for you guys to read this book. Unlikely guardian angels. Breakfast tacos. Broken families. A mystery. Some bad guys. Cowboy boots. Bad habits. A Mercury Grand Marquis. Kissing. Plus a sequel in 2014 that I need to finish this year, too!

4. Some travel: Austin and NYC and LA and maybe Chicago and definitely a bunch of Texas. SCBWI conferences and possibly BEA or ALA or maybe both. School visits. And in November: Austin Comic Con! Yes, I am already looking forward. You can blame that on our Comic Con evil mastermind, PJ Hoover, whose new book SOLSTICE comes out in June, another thing to look forward to in 2013. Maybe we'll sneak a vacation in there somewhere. Then again, I need a new bathroom. Which might happen in 2013, too.

5. The many, many books I will read. Currently on the Kindle, here's what's lined up: Warm Bodies; My Life in Heavy Metal and Plan B: A Novel. And of course YA novels of every type and stripe.

6. The new season of Covert Affairs, which won't start til June, but will be awesome, I know. Augie and Annie. That's all I'm saying. Also, I will catch up with Season 2 of Homeland, follow Season 3 of Downton Abbey and let's not even mention my Bravo addiction or the new eps of Vampire Diaries and Grimm and...  Episodic TV is my storytelling haven. What can I say.

7. And a million trillion other wonderful unknowns that will occur the way they do. There will be book ideas and starts and stops and crazy times with friends and colleagues and the good and bad and occasionally ugly of life. I will write and have adventures and hug my family.

8. But it will all start tomorrow, when I interview friend and author LAUREN STRASNICK here on the blog and she gives away a signed copy of her new book THEN YOU WERE GONE.

So stay tuned. Come back tomorrow.
And even though it's a week late: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Happy almost new year my dears!

For the past 8 years, I have visualized my goals in a letter that I write to myself each New Year's Day. I recap the year and then set very specific goals - not resolutions - but actual goals I hope to achieve for the coming year. This is how I adopted Lyla the 50 pound log of doom. I had written "Find a dog, not too big, that works with our family." Somehow this translated to dog who stretches so long that the front part of her can be on the floor and walking while her ass and back legs are still reclining on the couch. Sometimes things turn out differently than I'd planned.

But I've been doing this faithfully and tucking the paper away and actually checking it every couple of  months to see how I'm doing. Occasionally, I read it with surprise: Oh shit, I will say to myself -- totally forgot about that 'less caffeine' thing. Mostly it keeps me focused. Makes me understand that while some parts of success are luck and timing a great deal is from dogged persistence and tenacity and being fully present in the moment. Okay -- also listening to your agent and revising twenty times and then twenty more.

Mostly it means I keep myself accountable. It is my life and my career and I am fully aware that the cosmic anvil can fall on my head at any  moment. The goal list is not a set of manacles -- it is what I strive for and dream of -- it makes me stretch and grow and attempt the things I am afraid of.  I am aware of how many times I hear people say, "I can't now. My time is not my own. Maybe after... or Maybe when..." Do you hear this a lot too? Now I think -- Yes you can. You're just choosing not to.

I choose to try. I will fall. I will fail. I will succeed. I will watch too many Housewives episodes and worry about Bethenny and Jason's divorce and what Chantel from Gallery Girls is doing now. I will  let the Roecker sisters convince me that I have time to watch Season 1 of Girls and find myself addicted. I will waste two hours watching a horrible version of Anna Karenina. I will drink too much coffee and too many glasses of wine. I will lose my way and be scared. (not from the coffee and wine).  I will find my way and push onward and hope my internal compass isn't too cracked.

In 2013 I will have a new book on the shelf (THE SWEET DEAD LIFE) and a story in a new anthology (WHO DONE IT). But those things are already coming. Who knows what my new set of goals will bring?

I'll let you know.

What are YOUR goals for 2013?

Drinking green tea and eating a left over gluten free corn muffin, in case you were wondering. The corn muffins are a store brand (HEB, here in Texas). They are not bad, but it seems that in taking out the wheat flour that is shockingly the main ingredient in most other corn muffin mixes, they have added more sugar. Which seems more evident when it's cold than it did when they were warm. Anyone have thoughts about the whole gluten free movement/products?

To the five!

1. Almost done with act 1 of THE SWEET DEAD LIFE 2 (title to come soon). Which makes me even more EXCITED about THE SWEET DEAD LIFE 1, coming on May 14, 2013 from Soho Press! You guys are going to love Jenna and Casey! And I promise a Texas twist on the angel genre. Editor Dan and I love the world of TSDL -- it's funny and bittersweet and all about family and love -- plus a mystery to solve and the least likely suspect ever to become a guardian angel. Plus breakfast tacos and kolaches. And cowgirl boots.

2. Pondering the New Adult genre talk. Been reading some, too -- Just for Now by Abbi Glines and a sample of Easy by Tammara Webber, two titles that have gotten a lot of chatter on the old interwebs these days. So how much sexy time is too much sexy time in YA? This is the thought that keeps swirling my brain. Is there a point where - guilty pleasure or not -- we drift into soft porn, even if there's a story line underneath? How detailed and specific should sex scenes be and still be categorized as YA?   Does the novel then become first about the sexy times and second about the plot? And mind you, I love bad boy taming stories as much if not more than the next girl.  Would love to hear your thoughts. (Wow -- you get to comment on both gluten free products AND graphic sex scenes in YA this morning. Crazy times!)

3. Just finished Season 1 of Homeland. Oh how I love that show! Carrie and Brody and Sol and enough twists and turns to keep me glued. Some of the best writing on television. LOVE. Waiting for Season 2 to be available. So what else should I watch next? (ooh! sexy times, gluten AND TV questions!)

4. It snowed in Dallas on Christmas day while we were visiting prodigal son and prodigal son's wife. About 4 hours of sleet turned snow that stuck flurries. If you live in a place where it snows (like I used to when I grew up in Chicago), you are laughing at my tiny snowflake thrill. But we were dancing outside like maniacs. I put on my hat! And my Uggs! I pretended that this would turn into actual WINTER. And then I drove home to Houston where in any given week we rollercoaster from 35 - 80 over and over. Editor Dan in NYC says this is proof of global warming. I tell him we are a red state and are required not to believe in such things. In any case, it snowed. I was there.

5. Have not yet seen Le Miserables but hope to rectify that this weekend. Have seen: Guilt Trip, Silver Linings Play Book and Anna Karenina. In that order: Funny but not great; excellent performances that are better than the movie as a whole; too weird for words and author/photographer/all around cool girl Kristin Rae and I were fixated on the 70's porn star mustache of the actor playing Vronsky. It was icky. We got the giggles -- and this is probably not the effect the filmmaker wanted in a story that was going to end with Kiera Knightley biting it under the wheels of a locomotive. Your thoughts? (Yup - comment on gluten, sexy times, Homeland, snow, AND Anna Karenina!)

Till next week and my New Year's Eve post!