Tempest frenzy!

Have you guys heard of this book by Julie Cross that just came out last week?  It's called TEMPEST, and it's the first of a series, and DUDE...it has time travel.

You can buy this at B&N, Amazon, or through IndieBound.

So yeah, if you haven't heard of it, GET IT NOW.  Here's the description:

The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler.  Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

The author is also totally awesome herself. So awesome in fact, that she arranged some pretty cool events for the kids and teens in her hometown.  I'll let Suzie Townsend give a rundown on that later.  But in the meantime, check out some images from her book launch:

She totally drew a big crowd of enthusiastic readers.

And all of them wanted the book after she told them about it, of course.  Did I mention time travel?  Um, yeah.

She signed everyone's copy personally...and look! Suzie's there, too!

And one of the coolest parts of the night was when Uni High Student, Jackson, got to read from the book...as Jackson (the main character)!

So what's the takeaway?

That this book rocks.

Nuff said.

A New Blog to Follow + a Fight to the Death

For those of you who haven't heart about Pub Crawl yet, it's a group blog that has contributors from all walks of publishing life. We've got yet-to-be-published writers, published authors, assistants to bigwigs, agents, and even a bookseller!  (I am one of said agents.) The group blog was created to talk writing, talk books, talk stories, and we just launched in the new year.  To kick off, all of the members have been doing interviews, so go head over there to check it out!

Now as for that Fight to the Death that I promised....

Well you'll just have to read about it in this awesome book that I recently read and LOVED.  I have already bought 4 copies (1 for me, 3 as gifts) and counting. It was pitched as 500 Days of Summer meets American Psycho, and I have to say...it's pretty damn spot on for the pitch having read it. And you have to be in awe of how the author constructed each entry...the details are the best part.

I Hate You, Kelly Donahue

by Mark Svartz

His website is hilarious.

Read this.

Nuff said.

New Things, but first....

Beautiful Things

Many of you may not know this about me, but I love pretty things. Beautiful things. Stunning things.

It's not a materialistic thing at all. It's about the art of it.

One of my favorite shows on TV was/is Project Runway (though I've been bad at keeping up the last 2 seasons).  Put all of the cattiness aside, and you have real, talented, creative people, working hard to create beautiful things with few resources.  The outcome can sometimes be awful, of course, but more often than not, I find myself  ooooing and ahhhhing when it's runway time.

(Quick Tangent: my very first BEA in 2007, I had to sit with an author at the Autograph Area, and Tim Gunn was signing right next to me!  I was flipping out on the inside, but tried to keep my cool and focus on the outside.  In any case, one of Tim's assistant's must have noticed my Inner Squee because he snagged me a copy of A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style to keep for myself. The one thing I noticed?  Tim is just as kind and friendly as he is on the show--he talked to every person on line, asked about them, where they're from, what they do.  He was all around lovely.)

My sister got me a subscription to Vogue two years ago.  And as a rather bookish gal, you might think that most of my enjoyment comes from reading the articles.  While I do appreciate the stories, my favorite part of the magazine is the mixture of scents and colors and flavors and texture.  I smell every perfume sample, and fawn over the couture, and the shoes--the shoes!  And most of all...the inspiration!

How can you not be inspired by this month's spread called "The Cult of Beauty," where Saoirse Ronan models herself after the artistic visions of the nineteenth-century Aesthetic Movement?

This one is my favorite, but check out all of them here. 

Well.

This spread wasn't the only thing that bowled me over in this issue though.  I was met with a new gadget.

So you know how you have to pull back the little folded perfume ads to smell the scent?  Well apparently, they can do you one better these days.

Alien by Thierry Mugler had an ad, with something that looked like a small enveloped stuck inside. Above it was written simply:

Detach and spray.

How very Lewis Caroll of Monsieur Mugler.

So just like Alice, I went for it. (See? I'm still a bookish gal at heart.)

Turns out I don't *love* the scent, but it's also not bad.  Definitely worth a sniff.  But the coolest part was still how it was done.  See here:

Step One: Pull tab up. 

Step Two: See that little white hole?  Well, when you squeeze the envelope, it sprays at you.

Crazy, right??  So apparently I like beautiful, artful things...and things that are just damn cool.

What will they think of next, eh?

Poor Query Trend

We had a brief sitdown this week to discuss queries/submissions, and Nancy brought up something that really bothered her. It's something that I have been noticing over the last year, and it's gotten increasingly worse.

People are not proofreading their e-queries.

In some cases worse than others. But I can't tell you how many times we see spelling errors (note: most email programs have a spell-check these days), punctuation errors, and even sentences that don't make sense.

This is really a more recent thing. Of course there were always queries that had these issues, but we're seeing it more and more. And it seems like it should be common sense, right?

We're kind of at a loss as to why this is happening, and the only thing I can think of is that emailing makes it really easy to just type something out and hit "Send." Whereas, when we were all paying for postage on queries, perhaps more attention was paid? (note: I was a querying writer before email queries really came to be.)

I don't know. And I'm not knocking anyone in particular. There are also a number of e-queries that come in that are clearly proofread and professional.

(note: I'm not one to be picky about ONE error and neither is Nancy. Lately it's been more queries that are *riddled* with them.)

The issue here is that when I see that in a query, no matter how good your story is, I'm going to think the whole manuscript will read that way. It becomes an easy pass.

And while I'm currently closed to queries, Suzie, Kathleen and Nancy are not. They will pass if they see this.

Proofread those queries, guys!