Amy Reed's Blog, page 5
October 10, 2011
New CLEAN News…
Hello!
If you like books and live in the Bay Area, you should probably already know about Litquake, San Francisco's big literary festival this week. It all culminates with the Litcrawl this Saturday night, when literary revelers wander the Mission district, weaving in and out of the bars, bookstores, restaurants, coffeeshops, and galleries that host the night's many readings, lectures, and other bookish activities. I am sooooooooo honored to be a part of it this year, sharing a panel with awesome women at the KQED Writers' Block event "Some Girls from the Block."
Come see me read an excerpt from CLEAN this Saturday night, October 15, at Bruno's (2389 Mission Street, SF), at 7:15 pm (sadly for my teen fans, this event is 21 and over).
FYI: Writer's Block is KQED's weekly reading series featuring writers and performers of fiction, poetry, theater and whatnot. You can subscribe to their podcast via NPR or iTunes. Check out my archived readings from BEAUTIFUL and my short story HOW YOU REMEMBER HER.
In other exciting news, CLEAN was just nominated as a 2012 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Readers.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
xoxo,
Amy
September 1, 2011
Sneak peak of my third book CRAZY!!
I know I'm supposed to be promoting CLEAN now and everything, and my next book doesn't come out for another year, but I just really want to share this with you because I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH! And guess what?! It's a LOVE STORY! Hard to believe, I know. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age. But don't worry, it's still got all the grit and angst you love so much. And it also has ART NERDS! Hooray!
I hope those of who who have already read CLEAN like it (and thanks to your support, it's already going into its second printing!) I've received amazing messages from teens who relate to the characters and have found hope to carry them through their own struggles. Thank you for sharing your stories with me; you inspire me with your courage and resilience. Getting letters like yours reminds me why I write what I do.
And now, with no further ado, here's CRAZY:
Connor knows that Izzy will never fall in love with him the way he's fallen for her. But somehow he's been let into her crazy, exhilarating world and become her closest confidante. But the closer they get, the more Connor realizes that Izzy's highs are too high and her lows are too low. And the frenetic energy that makes her shine is starting to push her into a much darker place. As Izzy's behavior gets increasingly erratic and self-destructive, Connor gets increasingly desperate to stop her from plummeting. He knows he can't save her from her pain…but what if no one else can?
August 25, 2011
Seattle! San Francisco! Sonoma! My upcoming events
I am very excited and honored to be a part of these upcoming literary events. I hope to see you!
Saturday, September 24Sonoma County Book Festival
Santa Rosa, CA
11:30 a.m.
"Save the Drama for Your Mama: Contemporary YA Fiction"
(including my pal Nina LaCour, author of the amazing Hold Still)
Saturday, October 1
Northwest Bookfest
Kirkland, WA
5:00 p.m.
"Drugs, Sex and Reading: Talking to Teens about Tough Issues"
Saturday, October 15
LitQuake Lit Crawl
San Francisco, CA
Time & exact location TBD
KQED Writer's Block event: "Some Girls from the Block"
August 15, 2011
Photos from the CLEAN Release Party & Reading
Thank you to everyone who came out to my reading at Pegasus last Tuesday! And thanks to the boys at Pegasus for being such great hosts. I had a wonderful time and it was an honor to share CLEAN with you.
xoxo
Amy
July 19, 2011
Happy Birthday CLEAN! Now to get a little personal…
First, I'd like to give a huge THANK YOU to all the incredible bloggers who have already given such amazing feedback on advance copies. YA authors would be nowhere without you.
Now, a little background into why I wrote it.
CLEAN was a story that had been writing itself in my head for a long time, probably since I was a teenager. I had always wanted to tell a story about kids in rehab. My favorite books as a teenager were Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I continue to be fascinated by the concept of institutionalization, not only the practical details and implications of it, but also the metaphor inherent in being locked up, especially when you're dealing with an age group that is so driven by the desire for freedom and independence.
Like my first book BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN deals very frankly with drug and alcohol abuse. I received some criticism for this in BEAUTIFUL, and I understand that it's difficult subject matter for a lot of people. It should be. I'd be worried if readers weren't troubled by it. In both books, my primary goal has been to be honest, to not sugarcoat or hide anything, to tell the stories I know to be true, to tell the kinds of stories I wish I could have read as a teenager. When I was growing up, there was very little honest discussion about the kinds of things that were on my friends' and my mind. There was the blanket command "Just Say No," but that wasn't enough for me, and I don't think it's enough for many kids. What I needed, what I'm trying to write, was the truth. I think teenagers can handle a lot more than we give them credit for.
In CLEAN, I've tried to explore the complexities of drug use and abuse through the experiences of five characters who, despite being very different, I think carry pieces of all of us. It was important to me to show them as full, nuanced people, with hopes and loves and fears like everyone else—and also the disease of addiction. So often, we're given the message that Drugs Are Bad, and by extension, people who use drugs are bad. Well, these kids aren't bad. They're kids, and they're in a lot of pain. They've made some bad decisions and they've hurt people, sometimes very seriously, but they started out as we all do—with the potential to become anything. My goal is not to excuse their behavior, but to offer the reader some understanding of how people can go down such different paths. Hopefully I can offer some insight into how to avoid making some of their same mistakes.
I have seen the lives of people I love fall apart because of this disease, but I have also seen tremendous transformations, which can only be described as miracles. I have seen people who had fallen to what many of us would consider the lowest of the low, so close to death by either overdose or violence or suicide, but some glimmer of hope remained despite it all, some little voice that said "Live," and those people fought their way back to the world of the living and now lead completely different lives. This is what I hope for the characters in CLEAN, and for readers who may be fighting their own similar demons. Despite so many things inside them being broken, despite the pain and struggle that may haunt them for the rest of their lives, I believe they–I believe we–can change. I believe that deep down we are capable of things we haven't even dreamt of yet.
Love and hope,
Amy
July 5, 2011
CLEAN Excerpt!
You guys, CLEAN comes out in exactly TWO WEEKS! (That's July 19, in case you're bad with calendars). And look what I got in the mail this weekend:
To celebrate, I'm posting the first 18 pages to wet your whistle. Click HERE to read an excerpt from CLEAN.
xoxo,
Amy
June 29, 2011
I wasn't at ALA but my book was…
Look! It's the Simon Pulse booth at ALA in New Orleans. It's like I'm just hanging out next to Scott Westerfeld and Orson Scott Card, no big deal, like I totally deserve to share a shelf with them. Maybe later we'll go get a beignet at Cafe du Monde together. Golly.
Also, my agent just informed me that she received a REAL, LIVE COPY OF CLEAN in the mail today! But I don't have one yet! I probably have to wait a couple days because I'm on the West Coast. The anticipation is killing me. I may have to eat more cookies….
xoxo
Amy
June 27, 2011
CLEAN Release and Blog Tour News
Guess what, folks? It's only 22 DAYS until the official release date for my new book CLEAN (July 19)! That's almost exactly the two-year anniversary of when I started writing it. The life of a book is a funny thing. The act of writing is so far removed from publication–it's like the book has two different birthdays. I've already written a whole other book and started a new one since finishing CLEAN, but now I get to go back and hang out with her like she's getting born all over again.
Until then, there are a few exciting things I wanted to let you know about. Any day now, I'll be posting an excerpt of CLEAN on here, so stay tuned. I'm also planning a kind of "behind-the-book" post about CLEAN, with some background info and why I wrote it. I'm also super excited about an interview I'm doing with Nova Ren Suma, author of the extraordinary new book Imaginary Girls.
And for folks in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, I would LOVE to see you at the CLEAN release party, where I'm planning on doing a reading, signing and Q&A. Here's the info for that:
Pegasus Books
2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, August 9th at 7:30 p.m.
And last but definitely not least, here's the schedule of my upcoming blog tour for CLEAN. I'll be posting links to each feature on Twitter and Facebook as they happen, but I wanted to let you know ahead of time when I'll be visiting these amazing blogs so you can check them out:
Tour Dates: August 1-14
8/1: Review
8/2: Author Interview
8/3: Review
8/4: 'Teenage Garage Sale' Post
8/5: Review
8/6: 'Author This or That' Post
8/7: Review
8/8: Character Interview with Olivia
8/9: Review
8/10: 'Author Book Picks' Post
8/11: Review
8/12: Author Interview
8/13: Review
8/14: 'Character This or That' Post
I think that's it for now. Thanks to everyone for your support. I can't wait to hear what you think about CLEAN!
Hugs,
Amy
May 12, 2011
Edgy YA: My report from the IRA panel featuring Ellen Hopkins, Gayle Forman, David Levithan and Lauren Myracle
I was lucky to get to go to the International Reading Association conference in Orlando this week. Highlights included an excellent shopping expedition to the outlet mall, meeting lots of amazing teachers, and eating lots of room service. I also had my own little book signing at the Simon & Schuster booth:
(Sorry the picture's a little out of focus, but at least my hair's cute.)
The best part of all was the amazing three-hour panel featuring four of the most exciting voices in contemporary YA. To give you an idea, here's the title of the panel: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Edgy YA Novels that Teens Like to Read but Make Adults Nervous. To say I was inspired would be an understatement. I was struck (as I am often struck by YA authors in general) how devoted they are to their readers, how much the lives of teens mean to them. You don't hear this kind of stuff at an adult lit talk.
I won't summarize the entire three hours for you, but I do want to share some of my observations and favorite quotes by the authors. DISCLAIMER: these are not direct quotes; they are my tiny hand's attempts at scribbling what I heard as correctly as possible. So if I mangled some of their words, I am truly sorry.
Here are some highlights from the panel:
Lauren Myracle: author of many books including TTYL and the new Shine which sounds amazing)
Title: Speaking an Edgy Language that Teens Understand
After defining 'edgy' as 'new' and 'innovative': "There's nothing new about drugs and sex. Our material isn't 'edgy'—it's just unsanitized."
On being told that she's brave to write about difficult subject matter: "I'm not brave. Bravery is facing something you're afraid of. Writing about this stuff doesn't scare me. It's our characters who are the brave ones."
"If I'm not trying to make a home for justice, then I'm not doing my job as a writer or a human."
David Levithan: author of many books, including Boy Meets Boy, and co-author of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn) and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green)
Title: Gay Love: Refusing to be Pushed Off the Edge
First of all, he brought props—two Mickey Mouse dolls (we were in Orlando after all), which he configured in compromising positions in honor of the original title of his talk, which was changed at the last minute: Gay Sex: Refusing to be Pushed Off the Edge
"Hiding gay sex only emboldens the people who are afraid of it."
"'Edgy' is the code word for 'the truth.'"
He made me cry. Like a baby. I think the people around me thought I was crazy. It happened while he was reading a sex scene between two boys from his book Wide Awake. It was so beautifully and tenderly written. The characters were so much in love and in such control of their bodies. They were safe, physically and emotionally. It was not just a perfect gay sex scene, it was a perfect sex scene, period. I kept thinking of the kids who might find this book, might see this representation of what love can feel like, what sex with someone you love can feel like. I want kids to read this, queer and straight. I want this to be the kind of sex they hope for. I kept thinking about how this could be the light that gives a queer kid hope.
Gayle Forman: author of If I Stay and Where She Went
Title: Bloody Car Crashes, Out-of-Body Experiences, Steamy Sex Scenes, Angsty Rock Stars, Punk-Rock Parents, Heartbreak—It's all catnip for teen readers. But is there anything in there for teachers?
First of all, let me just say I plan to model myself after Mia's "punk-rock parents" when I have a kid.
On swearing in her books: "I write the characters as I hear them. Sometimes they curse. My mom cursed like a sailor, but then we'd go volunteer at a soup kitchen—so I never equated swearing with morality."
Ellen Hopkins: author of Crank, Impulse, Perfect, Fallout and many more
Title: Pushing the Edge: Abuse, Drugs, Suicide and Other Difficult Issues
Ellen is such a powerful voice in the fight against censorship. Her books have been challenged perhaps more than any other YA author. But she always perfectly articulates why she writes what she does. She explained how her book Crank puts a personal face on addiction, which is the most effective way for kids, or anyone really, to absorb info. Instead of just telling them what to do, it shows the choices and outcomes in a way readers can connect to emotionally.
"As much as we want to scrub childhood clean, we can't."
"Even the kids who aren't going to do this stuff—they need to have empathy for the kids who do."
"Information won't kill children; ignorance kills children."
At the end of the session, a librarian asked the panel what she can do when parents or community members demand that a book be banned or removed. Ellen's answer gave me chills, made me shed a few more tears, and made me so incredibly proud to be doing what I'm doing:
"Send them the letters we get from readers that tell us how our books saved their lives. Literally saved their lives. It's hard to argue with that."
April 21, 2011
Finally, a new blog post!
Hello hello hello! It's been three months since my last post. I don't really have a good excuse for you except that there's a lot of stuff going on in life that is more interesting than sitting in front of a computer. I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, being a writer and also working in publishing. I stare at a screen all day long. Lately, I've become quite fond of handwriting my work-in-progress. Like using an actual PEN and PAPER! I know, it's crazy. Somehow, it allows my brain to be a little less rigid; it turns off the obsessive editor in my head long enough to get something down that I don't automatically want to tear apart.
You know what's really crazy? I have written three novels. In four years. This seems preposterous to me. Whenever I meet new people and they ask me what I "do," I still don't know how to answer. When co-workers corner me in the elevator and ask how the writing's going, I am in much disbelief as they are when I tell them my third book just went to the copyeditor, my second book comes out in July, I have three more loosely outlined, and I'm a pretty good way into writing my fourth. Who is this person?! Certainly not that sad and confused girl who dropped out of college. Definitely not the wandering barista who moved every year. Somehow I became a person doing what I love. Somehow I found the thing that makes me want to structure my time and be productive, the vocation that inspires me to focus and find joy in working my ass off. I am so incredibly grateful.
My second novel CLEAN comes out July 19. It has become excruciating waiting for it. Like BEAUTIFUL, I poured my heart into this one and I can't wait to share it with you. Did I already tell you what the amazing Lisa McMann (author of the bestselling WAKE trilogy) said about it? "With deep, sympathetic characters and beautiful prose, CLEAN cuts to the heart. It's poignant and real. I can't stop thinking about it." What an incredible honor!
Also coming out soon is the anthology DEAR BULLY: 70 AUTHORS TELL THEIR STORY. I know I've already gushed about this book enough (did I mention that all the proceeds will go to anti-bullying charities?), but I wanted to share the beautiful new cover with you:
For my Bay Areas pals, I'm the the process of finalizing plans for my book release party in early August, which will probably be at one of my favorite indie bookstores in Berkeley–stay tuned for details!
As we get closer to the release of CLEAN, also stay tuned for an excerpt from the book, as well as links to reviews and interviews. I have a little blog tour planned around the release date, which will include a lot of fun posts on some wonderful bloggers' sites.
Thanks everyone for your support, and I can't wait to hear what you think about CLEAN!
Love,
Amy
(P.S. And if for some reason you want to hear from me more often, friend me on Facebook. I'm there way too often.)
(P.P.S. And if you want to pre-order a copy of CLEAN so it'll arrive at your doorstep, you can do it HERE)
(P.P.P.S. And if you're a blogger or reviewer and would like to request an eGalley of CLEAN, go HERE)
