Y.S. Lee's Blog, page 36

The Body at the Tower

It's now 3 months before the release of the second Agency novel, The Body at the Tower, and that means I'm finally allowed to show you the cover! Without further ado:

This cover, like the first, was designed by Caroline Lawrence at Candlewick. When she commissioned a photo shoot for Spy's cover, she photographed a second outfit for this novel, too. Caroline read both novels carefully and based both cover scenes – and the model's outfits – on scenes from the books.

There's been some discussion i...

Book club!

First, a confession: I have never belonged to a book club. This might be because I spent quite a long time at university and so had many years of focused and sustained discussion about a book/poem we'd all recently read (or pretended to read). Most classes were adequate-to-fine. A few were dismal. A very few were spectacular. So while I do love talking about books, there's something about the formality of a Book Club that gives me classroom flashbacks.

As a result, I'd no idea what to expect a...

The anti-book trailer

Do you like book trailers? I don't.

I hate waiting for them to load. They assume you read ve-ry slow-ly (Stephanie Burgis's trailer for A Most Improper Magick is the exception that proves the rule). The music is crap coming from my laptop speakers. And they don't make me want to buy the book. Result: I almost always axe them at the 15-second mark.

So what did I do this week? Inspired by Montreal-based auteur Non-Working Monkey, I made a book trailer. Mine, however, is an anti-book trailer that ...

Writing & reading

For the last couple of weeks, I've been crashing inelegantly towards the end of the third Mary Quinn novel, The Traitor and the Tunnel. I'm seeing progress, at last, and it feels good. I can tell I'm near because I've started making lists of things to do and books to read A.D. (After Delivery). Now, this is still a couple of weeks off, but it's never too early to list. So far, I've got (in no particular order):

YA & genre:
Perchance to Dream, by Lisa Mantchev
The Hunchback Assignments, by...

Booksellers of Kingston (is that a song?)

Lunch, for me, is the saddest meal. If I'm working, I often ignore hunger signs and start feeling a little hollow in the middle of the afternoon. Eventually, I scoff some leftovers while flicking through the New Yorker and scoot right back to my computer. And yes, I may then drink the coffee that was first poured at 7.30am. I know, I know.

Yesterday was different. Yesterday, Jennifer Herman (Marketing Manager at Random House Canada and a proper take-no-prisoners kind of woman) organized a...

Contest winners!

Dear Readers,

You are a delightfully insane bunch! Oh, I enjoyed your responses to "If I were a spy…". For the record, here are a few of my favourites:

Linda Hitchcock, for the Mrs. Pollifax reference:

If I were a spy, I'd cloak myself in the disguise of an older, civic minded matron who spends her days volunteering at the library or attending committee meetings. My DAR pin would cloak my secret microphone. Mrs. Pollifax, watch out! Have hats, will travel!

Lori, for her radical vision of the...

New book, new look!

There's one week left to win swag in the "If I were a spy…" contest! Enter here.

This week, I can finally share some wonderful news from my UK publisher, Walker Books. In September, Walker will publish the second Agency novel, The Body at the Tower, with a redesigned cover:

from Walker Books, September 2010

But I just recently had confirmation that they'll be reissuing A Spy in the House at the same time, with a matching redesigned cover. What do you think of it?

to be re-released in September...

Endings & beginnings

There's still time: enter the "If I were a spy…" contest here!

This is, appropriately enough, a week of both endings and beginnings. My final stop in the T2T blog tour is at Ticket to Anywhere, where I guest-blog about that most Victorian of fashion items: the corset. True or false? Prince Albert wore one. Also, blog host Irish reviews Spy and gives it four stars for being "hard to put down". Hurray!

I've been busy elsewhere, too. Shades of Romance Magazine interviewed me and I talked about a

Blog tour: Victorians and Opium

If you were a spy, what would YOU do? Tell me to win swag!

Rebecca Herman of Rebecca's Book Blog was one of the first book bloggers to notice Spy when the British edition was first published in 2009. You can check out our interview here – a first for both of us, I think! Today, I'm delighted to be Rebecca's guest once again and I'm talking about the Victorian uber-drug, opium. It wasn't just for the hookah-smoking avant-garde…

Blog tour: the Great Stink

The "If I were a spy…" contest rolls on! Enter here.

Today, the T2T blog tour takes me to the Story Siren, where Kristi found Spy "enthralling" and "a great start to a series". Hurray! You can read the rest of her review here.

Also at the Story Siren, I've written a guest post about the Great Stink of 1858, which is the setting for Spy. Yes, "the Great Stink" was its real name. See you there!