Ellie Marney's Blog, page 13

#LoveOzYAbookclub – May 2019 Author Interview – Astrid Scholte (Four Dead Queens)

Hello! Behind every good book is a whole other story, and this month’s author Q&A with the author of FOUR DEAD QUEENS, Astrid Scholte, reveal some of the backstory behind the writing of this wild adventure in Quadara.

Astrid herself has a background in film and television as an artist and manager, working on everything from Happy Feet 2 to Avatar. She lives in Melbourne, and is currently on tour for the promotion of her debut FOUR DEAD QUEENS (as well as keeping busy writing the sequel).

 

 

* One curious or unusual thing about you that most people don’t know…

While working at Weta Digital in Wellington, my hair was used as a photo model for a digital character on the King Kong ride at Universal Studios in LA. If you ever visit, keep an eye out for my hair!

#LoveOzYAbookclub May 2019 title announcement – FOUR DEAD QUEENS

Hello and welcome to May! We’ve had heaps of rain lately – finally – and in Australia the weather is changing towards that perfect time of year for cuddling up beside a warm fire/radiator/hot water bottle with a really great book. Huzzah!

And what a book we have for everyone this month… FOUR DEAD QUEENS is the debut sf/fantasy title by Astrid Scholte, and it’s making a big splash in the States, where Astrid is currently touring. Here’s a link to the Kirkus review, and a bit more about the book:

“Seventeen-year-old Keralie Corrington may seem harmless, but she’s, in fact, one of Quadara’s most skilled thieves and a liar. Varin, on the other hand, is an honest, upstanding citizen of Quadara’s most enlightened region, Eonia. He runs afoul of Keralie when she steals a package from him, putting his life in danger. When Varin attempts to retrieve the package, he and Keralie both find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that leaves all four of Quadara’s queens dead.

With no other choices and on the run from Keralie’s former employer, the two decide to join forces, endeavoring to discover who has killed the queens and save their own lives in the process. When their reluctant partnership blooms into a tenuous romance, they must overcome their own dark secrets in hopes of a future together that seemed impossible just days before. But first they have to stay alive and untangle the secrets behind the nation’s four dead queens.”

 

I hope you enjoy this month’s wild OzYA read! If you’d like to buy a copy of the book, you can get free shipping by quoting the ‘loveoz’ code right here at Boomerang Books. Or find the ebook on Amazon here.

Let me know what you think about our new title here on the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook group, or simply comment below. I’ll be in touch again soon, and happy reading!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub – March 2019 author interview: JENNA GUILLAUME (What I Like About Me)

For those of you who read Buzzfeed on the regular – and have a yen for things like Captain America’s beard, Hallmark romance movies, what the hell is going on with The Bachelor, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – you may already know Jenna Guillaume, who worked with the platform for a long time providing hilarious, up-to-the-minute content on the site and across her social media channels. In fact, this is how I first got to know Jenna – and I fast became an admirer of her pop culture insights and pithy one-liners.

Since she made the transition from Buzzfeed to YA publishing, Jenna has provided ample evidence that she’s a veteran appreciator of the kinds of things that YA audiences love – and in this interview, she’s given us a bit of a peek into her writing process and her love of everything heartfelt, romantic, and gloriously, gloriously trashy. I’m adopting her slogan, Embrace the trash! and I’m not gonna look back

#LoveOzYAbookclub March 2019 title announcement – WHAT I LIKE ABOUT ME

Hello and happy Labour Day weekend for those celebrating today! (of which I am one)

And I’m very pleased to announce that our read for March 2019 (I gave it a little more time, to make sure it was available on shelves) is the YA debut by Jenna Guillaume, WHAT I LIKE ABOUT ME.

Here’s a little bit of blurb for you:

You know all those movies where teenagers have, like, THE SUMMER OF THEIR LIVES?

This summer is probably not going to be that.

Source: Everything that’s happened since yesterday … 

The last thing sixteen-year-old Maisie Martin thought she’d be doing this summer is entering a beauty pageant.

Not when she’s spent most of her life hiding her body from everyone.

Not when her Dad is AWOL for Christmas and her gorgeous older sister has returned to rock Maisie’s shaky confidence. And her best friend starts going out with the boy she’s always loved.

But Maisie’s got something to prove.

As she writes down all the ways this summer is going from bad to worse in her school-assignment journal, what starts as a homework torture-device might just end up being an account of how Maisie didn’t let anything, or anyone, hold her back…

I’m really looking forward to reading this one, as it’s been on my radar since I heard that Jenna was writing it. Jenna’s online tweet-style is funny, acerbic and delightful, and I’m so keen to get stuck into this book!

You can find a print copy of the book here at Boomerang Books, and use the ‘loveoz’ code to get free shipping. Alternatively, you can find an ebook version at this link.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed yet, but my plan with this year’s titles for bookclub will be to incorporate a few more new releases (which made WHAT I LIKE ABOUT ME an obvious contender), but there will be a couple of long-time fan faves on the schedule for 2019 as well, so keep your eyes open. If we get inundated with new releases and people are finding it a bit tiring (or too promo-y) I’ll revert to my more mixed-bag style in 2020 – hope that’s okay!

Anyway, enjoy this brand new book, and catch you soon!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub author interview Feb 2019 – Demet Divaroren (LIVING ON HOPE STREET)

#LoveOzYAbookclub author interview Feb 2019 – Demet Divaroren (LIVING ON HOPE STREET)

Hello again, and welcome to this year’s first author interview! It’s great to be back in action on #LoveOzYAbookclub, and I try to provide an author Q&A (and sometimes an author FB chat) whenever we start a new title each month.

Demet Divaroren is a Turkish-Australian writer who moved to this country when she was six months old. She’s a Melbourne-bases author, editor and writing teacher, and her work has appeared in Griffith REVIEW, Island magazine, The Age, The Big Issue and the smash-hit AFL story collection, From The Outer, and she is co-editor of the CBCA-shortlisted anthology Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia. Her debut novel ‘Living on Hope Street’ won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (YA category) in 2018

And Demet has kindly agreed to answer some of our questions today on #LoveOzYAbookclub, which also makes her a good sport

#LoveOzYAbookclub February 2019 title announcement – LIVING ON HOPE STREET

Welcome to 2019 and welcome back to #LoveOzYAbookclub, folks! I hope your Thanksgiving-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Christmas-New Year celebrations were joyful, and your holidays relaxing and safe. My family spent some time doing our usual camping trip – long car rides, campfires, mosquitoes and incredibly beautiful beaches (and dolphins!) seem to have been a permanent part of our holiday tradition for as long as I can remember, and I hope your vacation was equally fun. Now we’re back again for another year of OzYA reading, and I can’t wait to get started!

Our first title for this year is a doozy: LIVING ON HOPE STREET by Demet Divaroren was the winner of last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (YA), and shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award as the Young Adult Book of the Year. Demet Divaroren was born in Turkey, and is the co-editor of the CBCA-shortlisted Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia (another great read). LIVING ON HOPE STREET is her debut novel, and it was critically acclaimed from the moment of its release. It comes recommended by everyone from Leanne Hall (another #LoveOzYAbookclub author alumnus) to Christos Tsiolkas – here’s the blurb:

We all love someone. We all fear something. Sometimes they live right next door – or even closer.

Kane will do everything he can to save his mother and his little brother Sam from the violence of his father, even if it means becoming a monster himself.

Mrs Aslan will protect the boys no matter what – even though her own family is in pieces.

Ada wants a family she can count on, while she faces new questions about herself.

Mr Bailey is afraid of the refugees next door, but his worst fear will take another form.

And Gugulethu is just trying to make a life away from terror.

On this street, everyone comes from different places, but to find peace they will have to discover what unites them.

A deeply moving, unflinching portrait of modern Australian suburban life.

This book is a triumph, and covers a lot of powerful ground – from modern-day multicultural Australia and domestic violence, to young love and what makes a family – and I do hope you enjoy it. Tune in to hear more from the author when we interview her later this month.

You can find a copy of LIVING ON HOPE STREET at Boomerang Books, and receive free shipping by using the ‘loveoz’ code. If ebook is your preferred reading experience, you can find a digital copy here. You’re most welcome to join in the discussion around HOPE STREET on the #LoveOzYAbookclub FB group page.

What a way to kick off the year! May your reading be rich and enjoyable in 2019 and may your year be full of happiness. See you again soon!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub title announcement Dec18-Jan19: OBSIDIO

Happy holidays! The time has come to cap off an amazing year of OzYA titles and reveal our final book for the year… In 2015, we read Illuminae, in 2016 we read Gemina, and in 2018, the year of its release, we will be reading OBSIDIO by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

You probably know what’s what already with this mind-boggling series, but here’s the blurb:

Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza—but who knows what they’ll find seven months after the invasion?

Meanwhile, Kady’s cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza’s ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys—an old flame from Asha’s past—reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict.

With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heroes will fall, and hearts will be broken.

HUZZAH! I’m so rapt to be sharing this final instalment of the ILLUMINAE FILES with you, and I hope you all have a most excellent time reading. You can find this month’s read at Boomerang Books, and use the ‘loveoz’ code to receive free shipping, or grab it here on ebook.

 

 

Man dressed as Santa Claus sitting by Christmas tree on beach, rear view

This is our last book of the year: #LoveOzYAbookclub will be on hiatus from now until 2019, so take your time reading, and we’ll all get back together to squee about our favourite time-warping heroes in February.

I’d like to thank everyone who’s joined, read, signal boosted and supported #LoveOzYAbookclub this past year – I can’t believe this group has been running for three years! – and wish you all the very best for the holiday season. Take care and be well: all love and peace from me and my family to you and yours, and I hope you’re looking forward to an exciting New Year of Australian YA books in 2019!

Lots of love

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub – Nov-Dec 2018 author interview: Emily Gale (I Am Out With Lanterns)

Emily Gale would have to be one of Australia’s best imports – an English émigré, she’s been enriching the local book-writing and book-selling scene since she arrived. She is an author of Junior and Young Adult fiction, and has worked in the literary industry for nearly twenty years, as an editor for Penguin and Egmont in the UK, and later with literary agencies and trade industry publication Bookseller+Publisher as a reviewer. She has been a judge for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and worked at Readings Books as the children’s buyer, where she was instrumental in establishing the Readings Children’s Book Prize. She has written four novels for teenagers – Girl Aloud, Steal My Sunshine and The Other Side of Summer. She released Eliza Bloom’s Diary in 2014 for younger readers.

Thanks to Emily for participating in our end-of-year bookclub antics! Hope you enjoy reading more about the story behind I Am Out With Lanterns:

Why this book? Why this story?

When I started writing The Other Side of Summer way back in 2011, it was a multiple POV book and Summer’s sister, Wren (she was then called Skye) was one of the voices. But I had early feedback that I was not going to be able to pull off a multiple POV, and I listened to it, deciding instead to make it Summer’s story. While I have no regrets about that decision, once I’d finished writing the novel I had a niggling feeling: was I really finished with Wren?

I’d always wanted to write a companion novel, and I felt I’d created a good set-up between Wren and her new best friend Milo, who are both keen artists. I was thinking a lot about the concept of selfies on Instagram – the way that young girls in particular are often castigated for these. I made the connection between female artists drawing self-portraits (similarly castigated throughout history) and centuries of male artists using and abusing female muses. At the time there was a spate of newspaper articles about teenage boys running accounts that featured photos of girls – many taken without permission (and various other forms of image-based abuse). The idea of teenagers trying to develop their self-image, while others were trying to control or abuse it, was a theme I felt very passionate about.

 

Your book has a title, and it’s an awesome title. But what might it have been called, if it wasn’t called what it is now?

In 2016, when I first conceived of the idea, it was called Something Only I Can See because I knew it was going to be about perspective. I’m relieved now that I changed it because Barry Jonsberg’s 2018 novel is called A Song Only I Can Hear! Too close for comfort. At the end of the first draft I considered what I’d produced in terms of the six (or seven if you count the little one!) points-of-view and all the different homes we go into throughout the novel, and I wondered about Behind Closed Doors, but I was also considering the art theme and what each of the characters had experienced so I came up with The Art Of Making Mistakes. Then I found out that there was another Penguin YA novel bought in from the USA called The Dangerous Art of Blending in, which sounded brilliant, so my ‘art’ title went in the bin. And I still had so much work to do on the draft – it was messy and uncontained, what WAS this book? I went back to the beginning of my research, when I’d come up with the character of Juliet, who reads a lot of Emily Dickinson and feels a kinship with her way of looking at the world. I thought of a line in one of Dickinson’s letters to a friend: ‘I am out with lanterns, looking for myself’ – and I had chills. That was it. I’d written a story about what we all do at that age – form our identity, seek like-minds, wonder if the people we have become will prove loveable to those we desire. I really, really worried that my publisher and beyond that everyone else would find it a strange, slippery, eccentric title. I do get some strange looks when I say it out loud – but no one in the YA community has found it particularly strange. So I guess we’re all a bunch of wonderful weirdos.

 

Okay –three hot books you would run in to save if your house was burning:

I’d need to save one children’s book, one YA novel and something for my inner-adult, who occasionally gets a look-in. Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel never fails to cheer me up, and the stories in this collection are delightfully philosophical, so that’d be useful after all my other belongings are destroyed by fire. From my YA collection I’d rescue Take Three Girls by Simmone Howell, Cath Crowley and Fiona Wood, because that’s three-for-the-price-of-one in terms of saving my favourite writers. And finally I’d save the magnificent memoir I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell, because the subtitle is ‘Seventeen Brushes With Death’ and when better to re-read that than when you’ve just risked your life to save some books?

 

The best opening line from a book, in your opinion, is:

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink” is the first line of I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I enjoy novels that turn the mundane into art and I love quirky narrators who are trying to figure themselves out.

 

Your favourite fictional tropes are:

I like any trope that involves a small town – the coming-home trope or the how-do-we-get-out-of-here trope. I think it’s because I grew up in London, so anywhere small and close-knit fascinates me. I’m a fan of love-triangles if they’re done well and I can embrace insta-love in the right hands. I’m not a fan of the makeover trope – for example, the part in The Breakfast Club where Molly Ringwald takes off Ally Sheedy’s make-up always irked me as a teen. In children’s lit I’ve always been a fan of ‘grumpy older character cheers up after meeting loveable kid’.

Thanks, Emily! The discussion post for I Am Out With Lanterns will be up on the #LoveOzYAbookclub group page in a few days

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub – November 2018 title announcement: I AM OUT WITH LANTERNS

Hello! With only a month-and-a-bit until Christmas and many things to do before year’s end, it’s time we got stuck into our November title! And I’m very pleased to announce that I AM OUT WITH LANTERNS by Emily Gale has been a very popular choice for our next-to-last book for the year.

One of us is in the dark.

One of us is a bully.

One of us wants to be understood.

One of us loves a girl who loves another.

One of us remembers the past as if it just happened.

One of us believes they’ve drawn the future.

But we’re all on the same map, looking for the same thing.

Year Ten begins with a jolt for best friends and neighbours Wren and Milo. Along with Hari, Juliet, Ben and Adie, they tell a story of friendship, family, wild crushes, bitter feuds, and the power of a portrait.

As their lives intertwine, images could bring them together, and tear them apart.

Emily Gale has offered to chip in and answer our odd questions for bookclub before the end of November – hooray! If you’d like to buy the book, you can use the ‘loveoz’ code to get free shipping on all paperbacks ordered through Boomerang Books. Alternatively, you can find the e-copy here.

I really hope you enjoy this one – I’ve been hearing many wonderful things about it from readers.

See you soon on bookclub, and enjoy the read!

xxEllie

Circus Hearts 3: All Aces is ready to rock!

The last book of the Circus Hearts series is finally here! You can find Ren and Zep’s story at any of these platforms:

Amazon US

Amazon AU

B&N Nook

Apple

Kobo

A teenage contortionist and a young cardsharp risk danger to right a family legacy of injustice.…

Nineteen-year-old contortionist Ren Putri is committed to circus, study and self-discipline  – in that order. But after being rescued from a carnival fire by cardsharp Zep Deal, she’s overwhelmed by some highly disorderly thoughts. Zep has a long history of trouble, and now he’s been suspected of sabotaging the circus that’s become his whole life. Ren is already coping with family, and keeping secrets of her own – but she can’t resist a mystery. Will Ren’s penchant for solving puzzles bring the case against Zep to rights, or will digging further into the bad blood between rival carnivals only put them both in danger?

*

Yay! This book was great fun to write, and I love the combination of sweet and sexy in the relationship between Ren Putri and Zep Deal. The first two books of the series involved characters who already knew each other well, but All Aces takes two people from passing acquaintances to romantic bond – it was fun to write a blooming romance like that, and especially fun to gently push a very ‘proper’ character like Ren out of her comfort zone. Also…cardsharps? I *love* them, and I got totally addicted to watching cardistry vids on Youtube while I was researching all the cool things Zep could do.

 

One of the best things about writing Ren and Zep was…finally being able to put my Indonesian language skills to use in a story! Some of you might know that I lived in Indonesia for a long time (about four years – my husband has lived there longer, about 10 years on and off) and I also teach Indonesian language at school. That’s not to say I didn’t need my language checked – I totally did, mainly because it’s been a few years since I lived in country (and language is an organic thing; meanings and words can change) but also because I needed to check the slang (slang is waaay harder to write, of course). It’s not that there’s pages and pages of Indonesian in the book – more that I wanted to make sure that the language I used was right, and I wanted to make sure that Ren was well-repped. For any Indonesian-speaking readers out there, I hope I’ve done it right