A PLETHORA OF PRETTIES

Hello, my dearest ducky darlings! Welcome back to the blog after my week-and-a-bit's-hiatus. Today I have for you a veritable FEAST of linkity and updates, so hold onto your hats.

First of all! It is now less than a month until the UK release of The Night Itself, and Lovely Lass' secret project (and all her plotting and planning) has finally come to fruition in the book trailer! Which isn't actually a traditional book trailer at all - it's a reading of an extract of the book, in which many, many charming blogger pals took part (and Lovely Lass too!) Here it is:


Mushy kisses and snuggles for everyone who donated their time and their performances to this. What do you think, guys? Does it whet your appetite? Likes and comments on the YouTube page are very much appreciated.

If that's not enough to get you exited, perhaps THIS will be!

 

Yes. Yes, that is the very first, hot off the presses, FINISHED COPY of The Night Itself. Thank you for asking. Guys, guys, you guys, I cannot express how beautimous this is in real life. It is exquisite. The pink absolutely GLOWS. My camera makes it look sort of purple-ish here, but this is true hot-pink and it's gorgeous. It's so gorgeous that Wonder Editor and Delightful Designer knocked this up for the Walker Books Inkslingers blog:

These people are hilarous. Best. Publisher. Ever.

The cover is SUEDE feel, all soft and buttery. I must confess to borderline inappropriate stroking. There are so many wonderful details. Like the praise for page: 

Never had one of these before! Look at all the pretty authors!

The spine! The spine! *Swoons*

Title page! Look at all the books I've written. Holy cr*p!

Chapter One - with added badass katana

The stunning back cover, with quote from L.A. Weatherly!

Which brings me to the next point: within this finished copy of The Night Itself, the name of book #2 of the trilogy is revealed. I think I've mentioned before that book #2 and #3 already have titles - the titles were actually one of the first things that I knew about all three books. I've just been keeping them secret because it's more fun for me that way. But since the title of the second book will soon be out there, I've decided to reveal it myself... on Thursday. I feel that the reveal deserves a post all of it's own (especially since I'm completely immersed in edits for this very book at the moment and it all feels like life-or-death to me). So stay tuned for that.

Other stuff!

If you'd like to check out some early reviews and read an exclusive extract of The Night Itself for yourself, you can find both on LoveReading4Kids. You do have to register with them to get access to the extract (which I know is annoying) but the Walker Books entry for TNI, where there would normally be an extract that you could access without registering, seems to be broken at the moment, so this is the best I can do. Plus, the teen reviews are glorious.

Next, here is a link to a really different interview that I did for The Madeleine Project. The questions are based on psychology and make for a fascinating result.

Finally, a result that popped up in my Google Alerts showed me an amazing unofficial redesign of the Shadows on the Moon cover by a very talented artist. I only wish that I could have this cover for real. Purple! Lightning! Knives! Shoji-screen silhouettes

Read you on Thursday, awesome nerds.

THE FINAL MEGA EXCLUSIVE THE NIGHT ITSELF GIVEAWAY: WINNER!

Hello, Dear and adorable Readers! No, your eyes do not deceive you - I *am* posting a day early today. This is because I'm going to be travelling for a chunk of this week, and also because I'm about to put the blog on hiatus for a little while. Don't panic - I'm only talking the rest of this week and then next week. I'll be back on the 18th of June. I'm hoping to make some really good headway on a new set of edits for The Name of the Blade book #2 during that period, so send me good thoughts.

In the meantime! Here's an article on my love of geeks which I wrote for the delightful SisterSpooky's Geek Week. Check it out - I'm giving hinty hints about The Night Itself which you may enjoy. I also wrote a post on Jack, the lesbian character in The Night Itself, for The Gay YA blog, in which I talk about you guys and how you helped me to decide how Jack should be written. That'll be up sometime today, so if you don't see it right now just check back later.

And now onto the most important part of this blog! It's time to pick the winner for the very last Mega Exclusive The Night Itself Giveaway, who will recieve all of this:

• A glossy full-colour The Night Itself Poster
• A spiral bound, lined, The Night Itself notebook
• The Night Itself fridge magnets/bookmarks
• Double-sided The Night Itself postcard/bookmarks
• AN ADVANCED READER'S PROOF COPY OF THE NIGHT ITSELF

These will be sent directly by Lovely Lass from Walker Books London offices. And in addition, I will be sending the winner a signed copy of any one of my published books (they get to pick), a hardback copy of Amy McCulloch's The Oathbreaker's Shadow and a paperback copy of Emma Pass' ACID, plus a fistful of other swag. I said MEGA giveaway, and mega I meant.

So! Who out of all the plucky entrants will win today's feast of awesome? Let's ask Random Number Org, shall we?

Entry number 7 wins the day! And that just happens to be...

***DRUMROLL***

***

***

***

***LUNA'S LITTLE LIBRARY!***

Congratulations, Luna! Drop me a line at z d marriott (AT) g mail (DOT) com and let me know the postal address where you would like your haul delivered, and also which book you'd like me to sign for you. 

To everyone else who entered this giveaway - and each of the others - helping to spread the buzz and be part of my excitement about this book, thank you. I've appreciated everything that you've done so much, especially the gorgeous fanart, which sincerely moved and humbled me. Not everyone could win, and I'm sorry that some of you are probably feeling a bit let down right now. But don't worry. There will be more giveaways (there are always more giveaways on this blog) and there will be more chances to win. And The Night Itself will be out in just one month now, so you'll be able to get your hands on it, one way or another, mind-blowingly soon :)

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, read good books, listen to good music, and be happy. I'll see you the week after next!

Zxx

RETROTHURSDAY: TEENAGE SUPERHERO

Hello and happy Thursday, my ducky-darlings! Before we get to today's post - imported at great cost and terrible peril from the dark swampy depths of the blog archive - I have links to share to two new advanced reviews of The Night Itself, both of which are just lovely. 

The first is on Readaraptor's blog, by the adorable Raimy, and the second is by the charming Jesse on Books4Teens. You should check out their blogs even if you are not remotely interested in my book, because they rock and their blogs rock. Thank you both so much, guys!

Now, just a bit of background on today's RetroPost. It begins with a lengthy preamble about YA Highway's Roadtrip Wednesday, which obviously is now very, very (two years) out of date. But I decided to leave it in because it's part of explaining how my brain got onto this topic in the first place. Just don't expect to see any of the topics mentioned here on the YA Highway blog now, OK? They are long gone. So, without further ado...

RetroThursday: TEENAGE SUPERHERO

 

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic. We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link in the comments - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments.

ETA: Turns out that YA Highway changed the topic for this week to 'Your favourite First Lines' after I had already written this post, meaning that once again I am unable to participate. This is what happens when I try to join in, people. It never ends well. But I thought I'd post what I wrote anyway, because it's heartfelt and it took a lot of effort to get it all down.

I've been wanting to take part in Road Trip Wednesday for ages now, but I always forgot or had something else important to post. So I was thrilled when the stars aligned this week and I not only remembered to check the YA Highway blog in time, but had nothing planned for Wednesday's post.

And then I saw the topic. 

Who did you want to be like in High School?

Brain freeze. Because here's the thing. When I was in school I wanted to be like:

 

Buffy Summers. Beautiful, brave, resourceful and strong. Surrounded by great friends. Willing to sacrifice her life for the good of others.

Elizabeth Bennett. Highly intelligent, quick-witted and funny, but also doing her best to live to strict principles of integrity, even when her own family were pushing her to make bad choices.

Daine from Tamora Pierce's The Immortals Quartet. Tough and competent, with hidden and still developing talents and a completely no-nonsense attitude.

But since I have a feeling this topic is related to the upcoming book Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard, that means the topic is actually asking, what REAL person did you want to be like in school?

Tricky. You see, I was not and never have been a 'follower'. Most of the girls I went to school with bent themselves into strange and awkward shapes, trying to make sure that they fitted in with everyone else. They all had to wear their hair a certain way - permed and scrunched, with at least one large, teased quiff at the front - dress a certain way - tight trousers, top with a certain label, a particular kind of shoes and bag - speak a certain way - lots of swearing, lots of scornful phrases, all topped off with a certain regional accent.

Of course, the less popular ones came off as a sort of cheap imitation of the really popular crowd, but that was okay, because by showing that they were willing to follow, they gained a kind of protection. Even the girls that I was friends with - the ones I knew were clever and funny and interesting people with their own unique traits - were desperately trying to suppress anything different about themselves so they could follow along in the popular kids footsteps. 

Don't stand out. Don't do anything different. Don't put your hand up in lessons. Don't smile at teachers. If you get a good mark, don't look pleased about it. For crying out loud, don't let on that you actually READ for fun.

These were the rules, and I broke all of them. I refused to pretend to be anything I wasn't, I refused to pretend to be stupid, and I emphatically refused to perm and scrunch my hair. No way. In fact, the more the other kids my age lectured me, made fun of me and picked on me, the more stubbornly I clung to being different.

That had consequences. Consequences which in some cases skated dangerously close to being life-threatening (like being pushed down stairs, having stones thrown at me, having my head repeatedly hit against a concrete wall) but which were always unpleasant (having ink flicked at my back, being spat at, having dozens of tiny balls of chewing gum thrown at my head so that I had to pull handfuls of my own hair out).

One by one I watched all my friends give in to the pressure. None of them defended me against the attacks - verbal or physical - because doing so would have put them in the line of fire. What's more, as time went on, they got angry with me for being the way I was. It was my own fault people bullied me, they said. Why did I have to be so different? Why couldn't I just fit in? In squashing themselves into the box that the other kids had told them they needed to fit, my friends had lost their bravery and compassion. All they gained was a craven desire not to stand out.

So school was a pretty damn lonely place for me. And the hardest part was knowing that with a few tweaks, a few changes, a few things that seemed so small, I could have turned it around. I was smart, and I could have done a really good impression of one of those cool girls - talked the way they did, acted the way they did. I was quite capable of fixing my hair to look as hideous as theirs did. I could stop putting my hand up in class, hide my books. And, just like had happened to my friends, within a short time the worst of the bullying would have stopped. I'd never have been in the popular crowd, but I wouldn't have been defying them anymore. They'd have lost interest.

Looking back, to be honest I'm stunned at the absolute core of steel I must have had as a teen. I remember so many days when I got home and went straight to my room to cry for hours over things that had been done to me at school. I remember broken glasses and bruises, I remember taunting words that used to echo in my head for hours. But I never let the other kids see me cry. I remember hearing someone say: 'She's too stuck up to feel pain'. Well, I wasn't. But I was too proud to ever let them see me feeling it. I was too proud to give in. And I was too proud to change.

For a long time after leaving school, I didn't like to think about it. I tried to block all the memories out. When random images of school days swam into my head, I'd take deep breaths, or hum under my breath, or flick the inside of my wrist, to try and drive them away. But as I've gotten a little older, I've started to realise something about the whole experience. Yes, it was dark, and scary and lonely. Yes, no one should ever have to go through what I did. But I didn't do anything wrong. The fault lay with the other children, and the teachers and parents who let them get away with acting like they did.

Teenage Zolah? She was AWESOME.

I truly don't know if I could find that kind of inner strength now. I don't know, if I was subjected to that kind of daily, constant harassment, the threat of violence, the verbal abuse, if I could stand up to my tormenters. I don't know if I'd last a week, let alone five years. But somehow that girl - that teenage girl between the ages of eleven and sixteen - managed it. She did something that most adults couldn't do without breaking down. She endured. She went back to that school day after day. And in the end she WON.

So. The reason this topic is tricky for me to answer, is that the person I wanted to be like in school?

Was me.

And if anyone out there right now, reading this blog, is going through something like Teenage Zolah did, back in the day? Just take a moment to realise how amazing you - like Teenage Zolah - really are.

You are a superhero. And you don't have to be like anyone but you.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS BY CRISTIN TERRILL: A REVIEW

Hi everyone! I hope you enjoyed what was, for me, a gloriously sunny bank holiday weekend. If it wasn't a bank holiday, or sunny, where you were, I hope you managed to enjoy yourself anyway.

Today I bring you a review of a fantastic debut (I can't believe this is a first novel, guys) by Cristin Terrill, called ALL OUR YESTERDAYS.

UK Cover from Bloomsbury

 The Blurb

"You have to kill him." 

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain.

Only Em can complete the final instruction. She’s tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present—imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside.

Marina has loved her best friend James since the day he moved next door when they were children. A gorgeous, introverted science prodigy from one of America’s most famous families, James finally seems to be seeing Marina in a new way, too. But on one disastrous night, James’s life crumbles apart, and with it, Marina’s hopes for their future. Now someone is trying to kill him. Marina will protect James, no matter what. Even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it. At least not as the girl she once was.

All Our Yesterdays is a wrenching, brilliantly plotted story of fierce love, unthinkable sacrifice, and the infinite implications of our every choice.

 The Review

As soon as I saw the synopsis for this book up on NetGalley I just *had* to have it. It immediately reminded me of an Australian drama series that I was hooked on as a young teen, The Girl From Tomorrow (although the stories are actually very different). I'll always remember how that show thoughtfully illustrated chaos theory and the nature of paradoxes. Paradoxes, and the various ways they can play out, fascinate me; I love time travel stories, because when they're done well they have a dense complexity to them which is hard to achieve in any other kind of fiction. ALL OUR YESTERDAYS is a very, very well done time travel story. 

Sixteen year old Marina is a poor little rich girl who has everything materially and yet longs for the basics most kids take for granted - like parents who care about her instead of using her as prop for their shallow, social-climbing lives. Constant emotional neglect has instilled a deep sense of self-loathing in her. She has a couple of girl-friends whom she strongly suspects only want to be around her because of her family's wealth, and whom she puts up with even though they don't seem to have her best interests at heart. She expects nothing better. The only person who makes her feel good about herself is her best friend James. James is rich, handsome and brilliant. He's the same age as Marina, but doesn't spend as much time with her as he used to, because he graduated high school at thirteen and went straight onto advanced studies at university. 

James lost both his parents to an accident at a young age and was left deeply traumatised. His beloved older brother, Nate, a rising young congressmen, is his guardian. Despite being socially awkward and absorbed to the point of obsession with his cutting edge work in physics, James is a good friend to Marina, and in return Marina loves him with the kind of single-minded, ruthless devotion which can only come from a place of complete loneliness. 

Marina responds to the advent of a new friend - Finn - into James' life just as you might expect; with jealousy and resentment. She sees Finn as an obstacle in the way of her ultimate goal, which is to get James to love her back so that he'll never leave her. Finn seems boundlessly self-confident, and his humour and laidback relationship with James set Marina completely on edge. She's sure that he's mocking her and messing with her on purpose. But Finn's life, family, and motivations are a mystery to Marina, and even to James.

Just as Marina is scrunching up her courage to confess her feelings to James, terrible events overtake the mismatched trio. They and the people most important to them come under attack, and all sense of safety shatters. Desperate to understand who is after them and why, they embark on a journey which will force them to question not only their relationships with each other and their assumptions about their world, but the nature of their own souls.

Meanwhile, years in the future, a pair of captured freedom fighters suffer brutal torture at the hands of a pair of men they call the Doctor and the Director. They are completely at the mercy of the totallitarian regime which has taken control of America, and plunged the entire world into war. Starved, sleep-deprived, beaten and interogated on a regular basis, the only comfort they have in their bare cells is each other's voices through the wall, and the knowledge that they haven't given up the location of the vital piece of paper which is the only reason they are still alive.

In the midst of this nightmare ordeal, they discover a list - a list left for them by a past version of themselves. The writing makes it clear that if they can break out, they will have the chance to go back and change the past in order to save themselves and the world from this terrible outcome. In fact, the list shows them that many different past versions of them have already attempted to do so, trying multiple stategies to attempt to prevent the construction of Cassandra, a giantic neutron collider which makes time travel possible and which has resulted in the horror they are now experiencing. Each strategy, from the simple to the extreme, has failed. The list tells them that there is only one possible thing left to do.

They have to kill someone.

Someone they knew and loved in their former lives, before everything went so terribly wrong and their world imploded. Someone whom they know their past selves will die to protect.

The premise of this book is spine-tingling - but that isn't all it has to offer. It's very well written, with vivid, believable dialogue and a fantastic sense of pace. The characters of Marina, Finn, James and future Em and Finn are wonderfully complex and real, characterised with a light touch that reveals them gradually through their actions as the story progresses. And in particular, I found Em's love and tenderness towards the past version of herself incredibly moving. It's so common to see modest - ie. self hating - heroines who 'don't know they're beautiful/special/smart/worthy of love' portrayed as positive in YA. It's joyous to read about a character whose journey, even in the midst of near-apocalypic events, is ultimately one to self-acceptance and self-respect.

The narrative is complicated but cleverly structured, flashing backward and forward between the actions of bleak, determined future Em and Finn and the struggling, immature present Finn, James and Marina, and then back further still, to other significant events that tie the two realities together. It felt like a series of Russian dolls, secrets nestling within each one so that every time you thought all had been revealed, the story would turn again. Marina and Em had subtly distinct voices, but they were similar enough that whether I was reading about the story's 'present' or 'past' or 'future', eveything felt seamless.

I have to admit that at the end of the story I was left with a few queries about how certain paradoxes resolved themselves. The idea that space-time has a kind of sentience, and attempts to mend rifts in its own fabric, was mentioned a couple of times, but I'm still not sure why some events 'rewound' themselves and others stuck. I think that future re-readings of this book would definitely repay me with a deeper understanding of how time travel in this universe worked. But all this aside, the ending was both bittersweet and deeply satisfying.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS is an action packed and profoundly emotional first novel, written with skill and self-assurance which have made Cristin Terrill an auto-buy author for me from now on. I can't wait for it to be available in hard copy here in the UK (August the first!). Highly recommended.

THE FINAL MEGA-EXCLUSIVE THE NIGHT ITSELF GIVEAWAY

Hello, my lovelies! Here we are again on Thursday, and it's time to launch the third and FINAL Mega-Exclusive The Night Itself Giveaway! Your very, very last chance to get your hands on a prize made up of utterly unique goodies, as below:

• A glossy full-colour The Night Itself Poster
• A spiral bound, lined, The Night Itself notebook
• The Night Itself fridge magnets/bookmarks
• Double-sided The Night Itself postcard/bookmarks
• AN ADVANCED READER'S PROOF COPY OF THE NIGHT ITSELF

In addition to all these things (which are exciting enough, I hope you agree!) which will be sent out by Lovely Lass herself, direct from the London offices of Walker Books, the winner of this final giveaway will also recieve an *extra* surprise present sent out by yours truly direct from the offices of... er... my house. This will include all kinds of cool stuff, like new copies of some fantastic YA novels, signed copies of a couple of my other books, and signed bookplates. There is a veritable FEAST of awesome coming your way if you enter this giveaway.

So what can you do to get in on that hot book action?

The task this time is to share the beautimous cover for The Night Itself wherever you can. Change your Twitter avatar to the cover. Change your Facebook profile pic. Change your Goodreads picture. Change your YouTube avatar. Change your Twitter or Tumblr wallpaper. Just get the cover out there in whatever way you can.

For each site that you display the cover art of the book, you get one entry. Just as before, post a link to each individual place where you have put the cover on display in a separate comment on this post - so, one comment for a Facebook profile picture, one comment for a Twitter avatar, etc. This is to ensure that each of your entries is fairly counted when the time comes to bust out the random number generator mojo.

Because this is the very last giveaway, I'm going to leave it open a little longer than the others, and pick out the winner in the first week of June, when it's exactly one month until the book's UK release date (eeeeeeiiii!). This means you have extra time to come up with all kinds of inventive ways to increase your number of entries and increase the exposure that the cover will get. Be creative. Go nuts.

As ever, though, no spamming other people's blogs in order to create entries, because that is bad juju.

Hope this all makes sense, my little chickadees! Take care of yourselves, and I'll read you next week.

THREE THINGS ON TUESDAY

Happy Tuesday, Dear Readers! Welcome to a mid-week feast of randomness from yours truly.

Thing the First: The very first blog review of The Night Itself! From the delightful Laura at Sister Spooky. This review contains a line I absolutely adore, because it perfectly sums up the book: 

Mio is transitioning from child to adult and finding it hard to fit in, even in her own skin and having a demon after your flesh and the fate of the city in your hands is a tad much for anyone.

How right Laura is! My poor Mio. Not only do her boobs stubbornly refuse to grow, but now she has to deal with the apocalypse too? Not cool, man. Not cool.

Laura is one of a small group of bloggers who got an early ARC of the book to review, because they're taking part in a special, The Night Itself-related project which is the brainchild of Lovely Lass. This is going to be very, very cool, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to share it with you all soon (but no promises, because it's Lovely Lass' baby, not mine).

Thing the Second: My second lot of music recommendations in as many weeks. I've listened to a lot of new artists over the last month - new to me, that is - and I've been finding a lot of inspiration in being surrounded by new voices, new sounds, new songs. So here are a couple of songs I've recently discovered and love, and have been singing in the shower.



In searching for these on YouTube, I discovered that half of them have apparently featured on The Vampire Diaries. I find this really odd. I am not a Vampire Diaries viewer, and yet about 50% of the time when I find a new song that I love, it turns out to have been on this show. Perhaps their musical director is my song-soulmate? Well, the songs are great anyway.

Thing the Third: This is me right now. Pretty much literally. My eyes are doing that exact crossing-thingie and I too am finding it all too easy to sort of wibble myself into a heap on the floor. Send me love and smoochies, you guise. I need all the help I can get.

FROSTBITE

Hello, duckies! Today I bring an update with a European flavour. You may remember last year I told you that FrostFire had sold in Germany to Carlsen Verlag (the German publisher of Stephenie Meyer and Kristin Cashore)? Well, I've been keeping an eagle eye on their website for a bit hoping that I would manage to see the cover art before it turned up in a Google alert (there's just something so weird about finding out about your foreign editions and cover art through Google alerts) and yesterday my obsessiveness was rewarded with my very first glimpse of the German version of the book.

As the post title hints, the title has been changed to Frostbite - Frostblüte in German. Which is quite funny because that's probably what I would have called the book, if two other books with that title (one by Kelley Armstrong and one by Richelle Mead) hadn't come out about six months before here in the UK. C'est la Vie.

Here's the synopsis from the Carlsen website, which I translated using my wonderful GCSE German. Ha ha ha ha. No, actually I didn't actually learn any useful German while studying for the GCSE, unless you count knowing how to order icecream and count to ten. I did this with Google translate:

Frost can not get close to anyone - and for good reason: She bears a wolf demon, which breaks out and kills indiscriminately if she is injured or overwhelmed by emotions.
 
When she joins a band of warriors who protect the kingdom from insurgents, she quickly arouses the interest of Luca, the leader, and the distrust of Arian, his best friend. Both men feel that she is hiding something. Frost soon suspects that one of them will rekindle the fire of her feelings. But at what price?

A heroine to die for - fragile and strong at the same time. A story that will leave you on tenterhooks with the fight against ruthless villains and inner demons. A book to revel in and devour - full of unexpected friendship, serious decisions and delicate, bittersweet love.

I'm sure that Frost herself would be very flattered by that description (actually she'd be horribly embarrassed and probably go hide in a tree or something, but again, C'est la Vie).

And now at last, here is the cover art:

Copyright 2013, Carlsen Verlag

This is very pretty indeed, with the snow and the restained swirly letters, and I'm so happy to see an actual wolf on there that I'll try not to worry that the model doesn't really look like Frost at all. Once more, C'est la Vie!

It looks like this will be coming out at the beginning of October this year, and will have ebook and paperback versions. I think I have a couple of Dear Readers in Germany already, so I hope they like it, and recommend it to their friends :)

That's all for today, so have a great weekend and I'll read you on Tuesday chickadees.