Bryony Pearce's Blog, page 4

Good news!

So, I've been pretty busy for the last few months.  I've been blogging periodically on The Edge (a group of eight edgy writers who have joined to promote one another and do group events) and horribly neglecting my own blog here.  Sorry about that.

I've been doing school visits, which I think I've finally got the hang of. Instead of talking about myself, I worked out that, just like a good book, a school visit should help the children learn something about themselves, so I do a personality quiz based on the characters in my books and a version of the Milgram's 'obedience to authority' experiment (as well as talking about myself).  So far I'm getting great feedback.

I've been to the SCBWI Great Expectations conference in Winchester.  I blogged all about it for The Edge http://edgeauthors.blogspot.com/2011/11/five-get-edgy-in-winchester-by-bryony.html

It was particularly good for me, because a couple of lovely editors asked to see my new work. I've been giving Windrunner's Daughter and The Society a final polish for the last week and hope that they'll be on their way in the next few days.  Fingers crossed!

Finally, a number of my friends have been shortlisted for awards recently and while I'm really pleased for them (particularly fellow Edge writer the lovely Miriam Halahmy who's debut YA Hidden has been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal), I have to admit (and yes, I know it makes me a terrible person) to feeling a little jealous.

Well, I no longer have to feel so green as Angel's Fury has been shortlisted for the Leeds Book Award.  I'm really excited.  Even if I don't win, I get to go to an awards dinner in May and being shortlisted out of so many amazing 2011 YA publications, is very special.

So friends, if I don't get back to this blog before Christmas, have a wonderful holiday.

With love.

What a week

Launch week was a crazy week.  First of all my party on the Sunday night; friends and family came from far and wide (Romania, Guernsey, Cumbria, London, Hertfordshire, Lancashire) to help me celebrate and I had a wonderful time.  I almost sold out of books and had a great many celebratory cocktails.

On Monday I travelled down to London for lunch with my editor, Philippa, my agent, Sam and my publicist, Jo.  We had Thai food at Addie's Cafe, champagne and then I very gratefully spent the afternoon in an air-conditioned room quietly signing books.  Just what my sore head needed.

On Tuesday I did a talk and signing in my local library.  We had a turn-out of twenty and I sold my remaining books.

On Wednesday I travelled to Crosby for 930am.  In the morning I visited Merchant Taylor Girls School and met two absolutely lovely groups of girls who kept me answering questions until their teachers kicked us out.  In the afternoon I was at Merchant Taylor Boys school and was asked to present awards during their end of year ceremony.  Three boys showed me around their school (Cameron, Harry and Viyas), they were articulate, charismatic and a credit to their school.  Then I presented awards to 'the talent' and received a wonderful gift of candleholders and a bunch of flowers, which was totally unexpected and for which I must write a thank you card!

I've since been in Waterstones Macclesfield, and am on a blog tour, which feels very cosmopolitan and celeb-ish.  I'm obsessively checking my Amazon ranking and searching the Internet for reviews, which are, so far, overwhelmingly positive.

A couple of weeks on from the launch, people are coming up to me in the street, sending me texts and messages on twitter and facebook to tell me how much they enjoyed my book.  It's a wonderful feeling and really I couldn't ask for anything more from a book launch.

Thank you everyone who has taken part and made my dream come true.

And this week?

… I'm potty training a two year old.

Sigh.

Book Launch

Well, it's finally here – I'm officially, properly a writer.  My friend Emma – in Australia – went to buy the book from her local bookshop and although it isn't out over there until August, apparently they had heard of Angel's Fury.  How cool is that?

Anyway, I had a big old party on Sunday to celebrate and they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some moments from Sunday night:

Thank you everyone who came and showed support. Thank you everyone who has read and enjoyed Angel's Fury and thank you to my publisher Egmont, who have helped me create something really special (and bought me Thai food the next day to help with the hangover).

Book signing

So I had my first proper talk and book signing this week – in Formby.  I was very nervous, and apparently it showed, so apologies to Formby High students for forcing them to endure my newbie session- I now have thoughts on how to improve things for the future, so I hope it was worth it for everyone.

The sessions were arranged by Tony from Pritchards Books, Formby.  I had no idea how proactive independent bookshops were in organising author events.  I popped in to see Tony and introduce myself after a day on the beach a few weeks ago and Tony was lovely – he didn't bat an eyelid at my appearance, although when I met him on Monday he did comment that he'd thought my hair was straight (force 9 Siberian winds on Formby beach to blame for that one).   After meeting me, Tony read my book, loved it and immediately started arranging events for me with local high schools.

Tony's introduction making me blush

I can't say how much that support was and is appreciated.  He met me at Formby High, introduced me to the students (and totally made me blush with all his praise for my book).

He arranged the book sales and signing, took me to  the book shop afterwards and set me up with his colleagues, Jon and Alison to finish the day on the street.

Highlights of the day for me included meeting the teachers, including Deb and Olwen, who raved about my book and introduced me to 'my biggest fan' – which was absolutely brilliant.  I sold a few copies to the students, including one named Che (pronounced Shay) who almost got two books, because one of the few people to stop and talk to me outside the bookshop turned out to be her grandmother, who tried to buy a copy 'for her grand-daughter Che' (I couldn't in all conscience let her buy it, but I was tempted – it was damn quiet on that street).

With Alison outside Pritchards Books

Formby High Students ... and me

I met some lovely students, some of whom were kind enough to let me get in a photo with them.  And I met an older girl called Hayley, who told me that she was a total non-reader until she  found Twilight and since then has been a complete convert.  Apparently she preferred Angel's Fury even to Twilight and despite only getting my book from Tony a couple of weeks earlier, had already read it FOUR TIMES!  Now that' s impressive.

Then literally the day after the visit, I received a Facebook message from one of the boys, who had already read the book and had proclaimed it 'absolutely fantastic'.

Hayley - who has already read Angel's Fury four times!

The low point of the day was finding out that Pritchards Books in Formby will soon be closing.  I think that's tragic. If you have a local bookshop make sure you support it, or one day

we'll have lost all our bookshops and libraries and browsing and

knowledgeable advice will be a thing of the past!

Linger by Maggie Steifvater

People occasionally ask me what the difference is between YA and adult fiction and I bluster for a while and generally say that YA tends to have a teenage protagonist, less swearing, less sex (if any) and more action. It tends to get straight to the point. There is much less exposition, introspection, naval gazing, philosphising and general messing about. Teens, publishers feel, are not willing to wait around while you wax lyrical on the beauty of the summer's night, they want to get straight to the werewolf attack.

And here's my deep, dark confession – I love YA fiction, but one of the things I really do both love and hate about it is that in the pursuit of action and 'getting to the point', the simple beauty of writing can sometimes be lost. Some of the books can, dare I say it, feel a bit like eating junk food – delicious at the time, but a few days later they start to blend into one and I can't even remember the storyline.

Now I know I said my next review would be Halahmy's Hidden – and that review is coming – but I had to mention the book I've just finished first: Linger by Maggie Steifvater.  This book is beautiful.  I think it's better than Shiver (the first in the trilogy) not because the story is any more exciting (it isn't), but because it really is a lovely piece of writing.

It's been a very long time since I've read a book (YA or adult) and had to stop and reread pages, not because I haven't a clue what's going on, but because the writing is so gorgeous I want to reread it.

I was beginning to think this wasn't possible in YA literature (that the red pen of doom gets to all the lyrical passages before the reader does), but I've been proven wrong. Steifvater uses the conceit of Sam's personality (he reads poetry and writes song lyrics) to insert actual poetry into her writing, but she doesn't need to.  Although I chewed over Sam's poems, the passages I really wanted to go back to were Steifvater's own descriptions.  She has a delicate hand and a natural poetry flows throughout her prose; her words scan and create beautiful images and emotions that don't overload you.

To be honest, in any other book I'd have been annoyed with Sam and Grace by now.  In one particular section Sam is caught in Grace's bed by her parents and booted out.  And you'd think no-one in the world ever had it harder than this couple who are forced to spend a night apart.  Normally I'd have put the book down and gone, 'for gods sake, it isn't as if he's bloody died'.  But the way Steifvater writes of their terrible loneliness (see, I'm even annoying myself – terrible loneliness indeed, it's ONE night apart) I just couldn't stop reading.  She had me hooked with the beauty of her description.

I'm really looking forward to the next installment of this trilogy and I thank Maggie Steifvater for proving to all the sceptics out that that YA paranormal romance can also be a memorable lesson in how to write beautiful prose.

Fantasy will soon be cool

I'll admit it, I was a teenage geek. Still am, ask my agent. If I'd had anyone to play it with, I'd have been playing Dungeons and Dragons, but unfortunately I was a lone geek. I love, love loved George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire (and cannot recommend the new series Game of Throne enough – it's a little on the graphic side for my tastes, but the story and acting is ace), I thought Raymond E Feist was amazing (Magician is still a how-to for fantasy writers) and as for Mickey Zucker Reichart, David Gemmell, Anne Macaffrey (although PERN is probably classified as sci-fi) and Piers Anthony … how would I have got through the teenage wilderness without you?

Thing is, in those long ago days (when Britpop was in its infancy, the Goonies were the coolest gang, The Lost Boys was the best film ever "you're a vampire? Wait till I tell mom!", ATARI was a state of the art video game and we still HAD videos) YA wasn't a genre, not really. We basically went from Nancy Drew to … adult literature. And being a precocious early reader I was definitely exposed to things I'll freely admit I shouldn't have been reading. At thirteen I was reading Stephen King's The Stand. More worryingly I was reading some very adult themed stuff in Piers Anthony's (Battle Circle) and some extremely dodgy fantasy the titles of which have been lost in time, but were basically porn – goodness knows how those got by my parents.

(From this point of view I'd like to say that although there are lots of arguments going on at the moment about what should and shouldn't be allowed in YA literature, as a parent I'm extremely glad that there is a genre that sits comfortably between Enid Blyton and Lori Foster!)

In my view though, the Fantasy genre represented the closest thing to modern YA. Piers Anthony's Xanth series was definitely for younger readers (stuffed full as it is with terrible puns, and as far as sex was concerned the most exciting moment was when Prince Dor got to put his hand on Princess Irene's boob through a prison wall). Anne Macaffrey's Brain and Brawn series was also often populated with younger protagonists and Orson Scott Card too must have had younger readers in mind when he wrote Ender's Game. These writers and many other fantasy writers were brilliant fun to read, high quality, issue driven and imaginative – all things that I consider to be a hallmark of YA fiction today.

Right now, what really makes me compare YA and traditional fantasy is the plethora of books emerging that remind me of books I read as a teenager. For example, books about faeries are popular at the moment (The Replacement, Charlaine Harris later books, Lament, The Iron Witch, Paranormalcy etc). Well, Tad Williams and Raymond E Feist (among others) got there first. If you enjoyed any of the books listed above you will also love Raymond E Feist Faerie Tale (1988) and Tad Williams War of the Flowers (2003).

And if you look in the YA section, you'll find some traditional fantasy being rebranded – Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks keeps turning up in the teenage section now.

Teenage readers who wouldn't be seen dead browsing the fantasy section will happily read about vampires, werewolves, faeries, elves etc, if it's branded YA. Fantasy isn't cool, YA is. But what else is a teenage girl falling in love with a vampire, if it isn't fantasy?

In a few years, our wonderful YA readers are going to grow up (those of whom aren't already grown up) and they'll have been raised on a diet of excellent, imaginative, issue driven books. So where are they going to go for their literature? I think they might take a walk over to the fantasy section – they say there are no original ideas, and in many cases fantasy got there first! Fantasy is due a renaissance, it's going to be COOL – I predicted it here, folks.

Review – Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

My next Bookette review is the exciting Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton. I chose this one to read for obvious reasons (Angelfire / Angel's Fury, subjects of reincarnation and fallen angels) but it turned out to exceed my expectations.

The protagonist in Angelfire is a teenage girl called Ellie. She lives a priviledged lifestyle, which is quite unusual for a teenage protagonist in this kind of tale (she regularly shops in designer stores, buys the kind of clothes most teens would only dream of and her birthday present is an Audi) and at first I found that distanced me from her, but then I really liked it – it was different – and who doesn't love a cool car and nice clothes?

Although she is one of these teenagers who start having strange things happen to them as their 'powers' develop, Moulton gets into the action quickly and Ellie is catapaulted from a normal teenage life, to hunting beasts called 'Reapers' in a slightly altered reality called the 'Grim', which only psychics can see/enter. Reapers are a sort of fallen angel and they take several beastly forms (from wolflike to bearlike to humanlike vir, the most powerful) and use their powers to kill humans and drag their souls directly to hell. Ellie wields cool swords and has the power of angelfire, the only thing that can destroy a reaper and it turns out that she is the reincarnation of, well, herself – as the only one in the world with this special power, every time she dies, she gets another life (like the biggest video game ever!) She gets reincarnated and her 'guardian', Will, has to wait for her to be reborn, so he can fight with her against the reapers once more.

The problem is, this time around things have changed, Ellie's soul has been absent for longer than usual and she has come back without her memories and much more 'human' than before.

Moulton manages to get us into the action by allowing Ellie to fight, while allowing her emotional journey in the form of remembering who she is (and who Will is), to take much longer. I thought that was very clever.

There are many questions raised in the book, including why has Ellie been absent for so long? Why shouldn't she have feelings for Will? What is Will's big secret? And who is Ellie really?

Meanwhile the reapers are after something called the Enshi that they think will destroy Ellie's soul altogether.

While trying to remember everything she ought to, Ellie and Will have to stop the reapers and Enshi.

This is a trilogy but, what I liked the most about Angelfire, apart from the fact that it was pretty much non-stop action, is that it feels like a full book, which answers most of our questions, certainly the big ones (who Ellie really is for example – and that was probably the best twist I've read in a while), but leaves enough to hook you into the next one (we end the book still unclear as to why Ellie's soul was not reincarnated earlier and why her father has changed so much – I have my own theories on that one). I've recently read some YA 'book ones' which leave so much unresolved it totally put me off reading any further – they felt as if someone had literally cut a bigger book in two. This book doesn't feel like that.

I really enjoyed Angelfire, it's exciting, good fun and you root for the characters. The only things that I didn't like were the things that distanced me from Ellie (for example when told that the soul of someone she knew and liked in more than one life has been ripped from his body and sent straight to hell, she doesn't even ask if there's any way to save his soul or get it back, she just accepts it), however these things are few and far between and I got much more invested in her as the book went on. There is a clear emotional journey that I think will deepen and develop in book two and I, for one, am very interested to see where Moulton goes with this series.

I heartily recommend Angelfire.

My book

With only seven weeks to go till publication, I have my book in my hands! The feeling is amazing. I've finally DONE IT. And I have a few weeks to just enjoy that feeling before I have to start being active and doing events.

I don't have a picture of it right now, but I'll put one up asap. It looks great.

In a weird way though, I hate to admit it, but (ssshhh) it's kind of anticlimactic. It's been so long in coming and so many people have worked so hard on it … to be honest I thought it would be … well … bigger. I figured it would have some sort of aura. Although it come in a super green shiny jiffy bag, it should have had a drum roll and trumpet entrance.

It's only a book. But, hey, it's MY BOOK.

And to be honest, I did keep getting it out and looking at it all day Friday. And I stroked it a lot on Saturday …

I'm going to read it soon. My very own, finished book. That I WROTE. ME. JOB DONE!

Review: Department 19 by Will Hill

I've been wanting to read Will Hill's Department 19 for some time. I think the premise is great: "Dracula … it's not a story, it's a history lesson." and the 'blurb' really made me want to buy the book (well done HarperCollins marketing department): "Department 6 is the Army … Department 13 is MI5 … Department 19 is the reason you're alive."

On the face of it, Department 19 is Stormbreaker with vampires: hugely talented teenage boy whose father dies under mysterious circumstances is recruited into a secret Government department. But instead of fighting terrorists, Jamie Carpenter is fighting vampires.

And yes, there is a touch of the 'boys own adventure' about Department 19. I can't help compare it to Paranormalcy, also set in a secret 'department' tasked with dealing with the underworld. But in Paranormalcy the institute is background, a set left to get on with things behind the action, while in Department 19, 'the Loop' is central to the action and described in great detail, almost like a character itself.

After Jamie's mother is kidnapped and he is taken to 'the Loop', he's understandably awestruck and Hill goes to great lengths to describe it for us. He obviously enjoys doing so; a tour guide who loves his subject. One gets the impression that had Hill's editor not been stood behind him with a sharp stick, we'd have been given technical specifications for all the equipment.

And I can definitely see how many readers (especially boys) would appreciate that level of detail, especially with the 'boys toys' and in the training montage (very enjoyable).

But Department 19 is more than a straight adventure story. The teenage hero is partnered with Frankenstein's monster (who has taken the name Frankenstein to honour his dead creator) and together they have to fight Dracula's progeny. The reason they end up in the situation they are, is told in flashbacks which cover various points in an alternative history, from van Helsing's return to London after the events of Dracula, to Jamie's father's death.

The flashbacks are well researched and well written, the tone of each reflecting the period in which they are set, so at no point do you get 'lost'. The flashbacks give the adventure depth and complexity and keep readers hooked.

Jamie has emotional depth and there is a romance – between Jamie and a vampire – that is believable and draws the reader further into Jamie's emotional battle.

Larissa herself is a heartbreaking character, whose back-story would draw in even the most jaded reader of vampire literature, but one of my few criticisms of the book are that I wish we had seen a little more of how the final battle effects Larissa (who up till then hadn't actually killed).

My other criticism is a matter of personal taste, for me the gore (and violent detail) got a bit too much towards the end. Many readers wouldn't agree and that's fine. I could just do with a bit less blood and guts late at night.

I enjoyed Department 19 and definitely look forward to the sequel, which is coming out in April 2012.

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

In the spirit of my last post, here is my first review – of Paranormalcy by Kiersten White.

I started Paranormalcy yesterday afternoon and finished it last night (late last night). It isn't short, I just really loved it. The characters are appealing, with real histories, depth and complexity, the voice of the protagonist is fully realised and convincing and it's exciting, keeping the reader off-balance and in as much suspense as Evie herself.

From my perspective, the book's main theme was 'normalcy' and how people perceive it. All the characters want to do is be free to live their idea of a normal life – it appears to be the driving motivation of every character. But of course, normal for one person is not normal for another and freedom is not always necessarily a good thing … or is it?

Nothing in this book is what it seems.

The book opens with a 'normal' incident in the life of the main character – Evie. And what a great opening. Evie reminded me a lot of Buffy – she's an attractive blonde teenager who goes out hunting vampires (and other supernaturals). But unlike Buffy, there's no chance of Evie falling in love with a vampire. Her own power is that she can see through 'glamours' (the images that supernaturals project to the world) and to her eyes vampires look like 'your grandpa … minus fifty pounds, plus 200 years'. She's 'sassy', she uses a pink taser that she has nicknamed Tasey and has a passion for the colour pink.

But she has lived in an institute since she was eight, has no idea who her parents are, and craves human contact and affection so much that it endangers her. The institute she works for seems a bit like 'the initiative' (again Buffy) a government agency out to 'bag and tag' paranormals and there are clearly things going on in there that she doesn't know.

At the end of her normal day, Evie foils an apparent attempt by a shapeshifter to infiltrate the institute and discovers that paranormals are being murdered. Why they are being killed and how it involves Evie forms the backbone of the storyline.

The romance in the book is lovely. It is not too 'hot and heavy', nor is it 'love at first sight', it is a touching and realistic depiction of two people who have never known what it's like to be loved for themselves, to really be 'seen'. For me, a particularly emotional scene has Lend taking the form of an unattractive boy and when Evie barely even notices he says "you don't really care about this face, do you?"; that's all White needs to say to show the reader how desperately Lend has wanted to know that someone his age likes him for something other than the face he can project.

Like Shakespeare often does with his play-within-a-play, White also plays a great game with 'what could have been'. Easton Heights is a high school soap opera, Evie's favourite programme, which she imagines portrays normal high school life. When Evie gets to spend a single day in a real high school, she expects cat-fights and snogging, but in fact gets an ordinary day. White plays brilliantly with the stereotypes of teenage fiction; for example, she sets up a character as 'the mean girl' and in many other books she would have attacked Evie just because she's 'the mean girl', but she backs down and they end up being quite friendly. It was clever and it made me smile.

The threat hanging over Evie, the creepy stalker ex that she can't shake, the scent of death that surrounds her every move, is brilliantly depicted. White has done her research and that makes it all the more real, especially as so much of the story depends on an important piece of faery lore.

I really can't say how much I enjoyed reading this book

My only criticism is that, given Evie's importance to the government (a whole international treaty has been developed around her very existence), she gets to spend a lot of time in the field unprotected – one would imagine that she would at the very least, have a hulking bodyguard, it being set in America. Still, that was the only thing that required me to suspend my disbelief – and this is in a book that also contains werewolves, mermaids, vampires, shapeshifters, faeries and much more. That's how good the writing is.

I heartily recommend Paranormalcy, it's a fresh voice in the 'paranormal romance' market and everyone should enjoy it.