Ellie Marney's Blog, page 18

#LoveOzYAbookclub August 2017 discussion post: BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS (Jane Harrison)

Ever read a little book that leaves a big mark?

Last year I tried to get stuck into reading as much popular fiction by Indigenous authors as I could. Jared Thomas, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Tony Birch and Jane Harrison all left their mark on my mind, but something about KIRRALI LEWIS remained with me. I think it was because the quiet heartbreak and joy of Kirrali’s story really changed the way I looked at the world, reminded me that a white perspective is not the only perspective – for all that it tends to be the dominant one in Australia, a land where the perspectives of the existing population have long been pushed aside – and that it’s possible to have your life and viewpoint changed over the course of a life.

I enjoyed the way the narrative sucked me in gradually, until I was halfway through the book before I realised I was looking at events in a different way, and my expectations of what would happen and how had changed. I was expecting Kirrali to have a tearful reunion with her Indigenous biological mum – that didn’t happen. I was expecting Kirrali’s biological father to be really invested in her emotionally – that didn’t happen either. But the way things played out in the book felt real, felt true. And because events and plot twists upended my expectations, I had a closer emotional connection to the characters: life is complicated, and the story reflected that.

Jane Harrison’s debut YA novel was a ‘quiet’ book, and there’s been some discussion about whether ‘quiet’ books will continue to be published, as they don’t have the razzle-dazzle and mega-sales that prompts a publisher to sign on for more. I really hope they do – we need all kinds of variety in local literature, especially in YA. There’s teacher’s discussion notes for KIRRALI too, which might be of interest to the librarians and teachers in our little bookclub group.

If you have a comment about BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS, feel free to leave it here or in the comments thread at the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook group page – you can leave a 1-5 star rating, if you’re time-pressed. I’m very curious now to see what you all thought about KIRRALI, and please stay tuned for the next announcement of the September title.

Stay cool, bookclubbers – and stay warm, in these chilly end-of-winter months!

xxEllie

NO LIMITS Launch Party, and a huge thank yous

Heya! *waves* I’m laid up in bed with a hideous cold right now (stay back – you don’t want to get these germs, trust me), but I’m dropping by real quick to give an excited cheer for NO LIMITS, which was released into the wild by me and Sarah and Alex, the gals from The YA Room, at Dymocks CBD Melbourne on August 18. There was a stack of book copies, amazing cupcakes (iced in cover colours!), some lovely reviews of the book, a Q&A, me signing stuff and a helluva lot of people. Here’s a few pics to give you some idea of general shenanigans:

I’d like to say a huge Thank You to everyone who came out on such a cold, wet, dirty August night to help me celebrate! I really appreciate that level of support, especially from some of you who came from hours away – one attendee came from up near Macedon, and other fans came from way out, so wow. Just wow. That made me feel amazing and so so grateful.

I also want to take the chance here to reiterate what I said the night of the launch: that writing NO LIMITS rose out of my own desire to tell Harris and Amie’s story, but it takes a team to create a book, and you have all been my team in this massive journey. So many people have kept the flame burning, even when I didn’t think the book’s publication would ever happen – I had a ton of people who emailed and commented and asked me when on earth my Harris book was going to arrive. Without that push, I might have given up long ago. So this book is really for the fans: the people who love Harris just as much as I do, and have been in my corner the whole way.

Thank you all heaps.

Now, before I get too mushy, I have to tell you there’s a GoodReads giveaway for NO LIMITS – I’m releasing five signed print copies of the book over the next month, so please feel free to join in. It’s very easy – go here before September 22 and click.

Folks have also been asking where they can get copies of NO LIMITS in ebook and print – to make it nice and easy for everyone, I’ve made a handy little graphic right here

#LoveOzYAbookclub – August 2017 author interview: Jane Harrison (BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS)

Our book this month is written by one of the loveliest people you could hope to meet – Jane Harrison is a descendent of the Muruwari people of NSW, and is an award-winning playwright and author. Apart from all her amazing achievements, and being an awesome writer, Jane is just an all-round ace person – I got to know her through her work as the Director of Blak & Bright at Writers Vic, and was even more awestruck after I read BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS.

So, in usual fashion, I asked Jane all the oddball questions we usually throw at our poor authors who appear on bookclub, and Jane was gracious enough to provide lengthy and insightful replies! Check out her answers to questions of process, inspiration, and pop culture references from 1985…

Why this book? Why this story?

I grew up reading without books without Aboriginal protagonists – other than the Boney books, which were written by a non-Aboriginal author. And still there is not enough of them, especially on school curricula. (I’ll step off my soap box now).  I wanted to write a book that focused on the experience of being an urban Aboriginal person. I had also heard many stories of the Stolen Generations (I am not Stolen, myself) during the research for my play Stolen, including the stories of some people who had had a good experience of being adopted into a white family – with the caveat that they still were compelled to seek out that important connection to their Aboriginal heritage as they grew older. It is difficult territory to traverse, but I hope I have done it sensitively.

 

Working in silence? To music? With snacks? No snacks? What are the essentials for your writing routine?

My routine is no routine. I used to love writing in cafes, but with a coffee machine at home I don’t need to leave the house these days. I do get ‘properly’ dressed though – I vowed to stop writing in pyjamas or trackie daks when I turned 40 cos it’s too easy to look like a hobo. I definitely write in silence … I can’t hear my internal voice if there’s music on. I also have a very short attention span, so I will hang up a load of washing, pull out weeds etc during my vital ‘writing time’. I console myself with the fact that I often get left of field ideas doing mundane things.

 

Your book makes No#1 with a bullet on the NYT Bestseller List, and a famous bartender at the Ritz-Carlton makes a cocktail in its honour.  What’s in the cocktail and what is it called?

I do like a cocktail … I was introduced to them when I was in New York for the reading of my play Stolen at the Drama Bookshop. Specifically, a Long Island Tea which is not the kind of tea my mother drank, when I was growing up (remember Robur anyone?). I also sampled a cocktail called a Dirty Jane in a bar named ‘Jane’.  Anyway … as an ode to ’85, which is when Kirrali is set, I’d probably call it ‘Big Hair’. Except Big Hair doesn’t sound like something you’d want to drink.  Perhaps a Kirralili. That sounds ritzy.

 

Why write for teenagers?  Why not adults, or little munchkins?:

Inside I am still 13, despite the sags and wrinkles. That mixture of confidence, insecurity, lack of political nous, dreaminess, ambition, despair and body dysmorphia still persists! So I think I can relate – unless of course teenagers don’t actually feel in those ways these days?

 

While researching your book, you found out some crazy stuff, and it was this:

I started writing Kirrali 18 years ago …. Which is a lot closer to 1985 than in 2014, when I finally completed it. During the editing process I had to go back and check that I’d got all the technology and trends right. I wanted to reference to pop culture that still resonated (I am still annoyed that I couldn’t refer to the film Pretty in Pink, because it came out a couple of months after the time period I was writing about). Technology-wise, we’ve come so far. In 1985 some word processors were being used but the personal computer was a rarity even in the workplace. And of course mobile phones hadn’t been invented so Kirrali has to run about trying to find a public phone that works. Education was free though – probably Kirrali wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to Uni if it hadn’t been (me neither). And yes, fluoro clothes were a thing…

 

Thanks, Jane, for visiting us and getting your sillies on with #LoveOzYAbookclub!

xxEllie

Sharing No Limits

Hello again!

I can hardly believe it, but NO LIMITS is about to go live.

I originally wrote this book because – no matter what people told me – I simply could not stop obsessing over Harris’s story. I had already sunk so deep into his head, and into the desperate situation that he and Amie found themselves in, that there was no turning back. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the issues around ice use in local country towns (towns just like my own), and how it was affecting the teenagers in those towns – even though I was warned that a book about teens and drug crime would likely never make it to print. There were plenty of times I thought a NO LIMITS release day would never come…but here we are. Bloody amazing.

If you’d like to help out with the NO LIMITS launch, and make the book go right over the top, then yay! You can!

Here are some images I’ve whipped up to encourage people to get on board with the release. If you’d like to blag them around on your Twitter, Facebook or Instagram channels, help yourself. Go nuts, and thank you!

Twitter post:

Facebook post:

Instagram post:

Whee! I am so excited about the August 14 release day and sharing this book with readers!

Finally, if you’re in Melbourne, see you on August 18 at Dymocks CBD Collins St at 6.30pm for the launch party to end all launch parties – free booking is here. I will likely be nervous as hell, but seeing friendly faces there will be awesome.

xxEllie

 

#LoveOzYAbookclub August 2017 title selection: BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS (Jane Harrison)

Sometimes I like to choose a book for bookclub that I feel has been a bit overlooked. Next month I’m planning to give you a wild ride, but the book for August 2017 is something a bit quieter and a bit special: local YA author and playwright and generally wonderful person Jane Harrison’s lovely book, BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS.

Set in the tumultuous era of civil rights activism in the 1960s and the changed landscape of the 1980s, BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS is a coming of age story about Kirrali, a Koori girl who’s been ‘raised white’ in a loving adoptive family. But when she enters university to study for her law degree, her notions of identity are challenged, and she begins the unexpected quest for her birth family. It’s a story about race and identity and love, and Jane Harrison’s writing will knock your socks off.

Jane is a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW. She is a well-known playwright – her play Stolen has been performed all over Australia, and in the UK, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and was the co-winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award 2002. Both Stolen and her other work, Rainbow’s End, have been on the English syllabi. Her essays include My Journey through Stolen, the MJA Ross Ingram 2010 award-winning Healing our communities, healing ourselves, and Indig-curious; who can play Aboriginal roles?  She has an MA in Playwriting from QUT – KIRRALI is her first YA novel, and it was highly commended in the Vic Premier’s Literary Awards, as well as winning the 2014 blak&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship in 2014.

I hope you enjoy BECOMING KIRRALI LEWIS – I’m looking forward to talking about it with you! You can order the book here through Boomerang Books, and use the ‘loveoz’ code to receive free shipping.

Chat again soon!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub June-July 2017 discussion post: INTO THE RIVER (Ted Dawe)

Okay, first of all: I have no idea why this book was banned.

The story exposes an unpalatable side of elite private boarding school education. But this is a side we know from (many) previous books – I was vividly reminded of Bryce Courtenay’s Power of One, and even Rebecca Starford’s Bad Behaviour springs to mind – and it’s not exactly a taboo subject. Even everyone’s most beloved school, Hogwarts, has a touch of that archaic prep school nonsense (and a certain amount of bland bigotry) that makes boarding school sagas so bizarrely fascinating, particularly to people (like me) who’ve never gone to one.

Other than the weirdness of elite boarding schools, the story contained swearing, sex, drugs and alcohol, and adults preying on teenagers. But I’ve read these things in other books – even in other YA books. Why all the outrage? Maybe Family First representatives in NZ lead very sheltered lives. One can only assume so.

Again, as with some other literary YA books we’ve covered in bookclub, I didn’t know if INTO THE RIVER could be called a YA book. My main criteria for calling a book YA, I’m realising, is the answer to the question ‘would teenagers voluntarily pick up and read it?’. INTO THE RIVER didn’t read much like a YA book in the first half, although the second half had more of a Chbosky feel.  Yes, the book is written from the perspective of a teenage protagonist, and it’s dealing with things that teenagers would benefit from reading about. But Te Arepa has limited agency in the story – it’s largely external (adult) forces that move the action. And teenagers themselves are notorious for running a mile in the other direction from anything labelled as ‘beneficial’ for them. While I enjoyed it, I don’t know if many teenagers would find it easy to get into.

The cover needs work. Was this book released by Penguin Random House? It was indeed released by PRH. Where was their cover designer that day?

The Deputy Chief Censor of Film and Literature in NZ pronounced about INTO THE RIVER, ‘The book is notable for being one of the first in New Zealand which specifically targets teenage boys and younger men – a genre that does not have great representation’. Leaving aside the fact that the Deputy Chief Censor doesn’t seem to understand what ‘genre’ means, and the dubious question of whether boys and men are adequately represented in fiction (and breaking it down further, in YA fiction, and then even further, in YA fiction written and published in NZ)* I still don’t know that the book specifically targets them, above and beyond the fact it has a male protagonist, and the plot deals with his inner state of mind and ‘boy stuff’. If I was a teenage boy I wouldn’t pick up the book based on the cover. But then I might not pick up Lord of the Flies based on the original cover, either.

But maybe the ‘boys and men’ thing was simply an additional excuse to get the book unbanned. Folks, c’mon – don’t ban books. It’s superdumb. It makes you look superdumb. And – ohmigod has nobody from the conservative right noticed this? – it generally only encourages more people to read the book! Yes! Free publicity! If you want a book to sink without a trace, just treat it like a normal book and nobody will notice it. But if you want everyone to sit up and pay attention, then sure, ban it, by all means. Knock yourself out.*

The Maori perspective was transgressive and compelling, and offered a genuinely challenging view. That was actually the part of the book that drew me in. But I felt it was completely overshadowed in the second half. There was a lot of build-up about Te Arepa’s ancestral heritage in the first half of the story, but by the time the book finished I was left wondering why, as it’s not something the character goes back to. I got a sense of promise wasted. But maybe that’s what Ted Dawe was trying to illustrate. Or maybe it’s something he returns to in the sequel THUNDER ROAD. I don’t know. I was left strangely unsatisfied, though.

I do want to read the sequel THUNDER ROAD, now, though. And here’s some other reviews, if you’re interested, from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly, and they both seemed to like it pretty good, so maybe it is just me.

And I still don’t understand why the book was banned!

Help me out here, people.

xxEllie

*Uh, call me crazy, but you just can’t convince me that boys and men aren’t adequately represented anywhere in hundreds of years of literary canon written by guys.

*Irony, people. Of course I’m not advocating for banning books. Books should not be banned. That is wrong. *wags finger*

NO LIMITS: Self-Publishing

Okay, last time I posted about process stuff I went into the backstory of the process of writing NO LIMITS and talked a lot of wank about how I was channelling the characters during the writing of the book, which is true, but no less wanky for being true. Today I thought we’d dip into something a bit less ephemeral and mysterious and talk about self-publishing, specifically why I decided to self-publish this book and some of my thoughts on the matter. Because I know there will be people who’ll ask me about it – the why of it – and I figure I may as well get it out of the way.

So first, most of you know I am traditionally published (by Allen & Unwin in Australia, and Tundra Books in Canada/US) and perhaps you’re wondering ‘how did it come to this?’ or something, over the fact I’m self-publishing. Because self-publishing has, for some time, been held in rather low regard as the last resort of writers who aren’t good enough for trad publishing, and an arena only for poor-quality books (described concisely by Chuck Wendig as ‘A rising tide of turd-froth in terms of self-published bilge’ – and Wendig is a guy who likes self-publishing).

So doubtless some people will be wondering if NO LIMITS is shit, like maybe my publisher didn’t want it because it was shit, and here I am pursuing my own vainglorious (and perhaps avaricious) desire to get to the book out into the world because a) as the creator of the book, I’m deluded about its worth, or b) I’m trying to rake in the cash, or maybe c) I’m just stubborn and proud, and I think every word that I type is made of gold or something.

On the issue of a), while I cannot deny that yes, I am the creator of the book, which would certainly lend itself to a lack of objectivity, I can only say that I believe the book is good. If my word is insufficient, then perhaps you might care to take the word of the half-dozen or so respectable people who have read NO LIMITS and declared it good – I am certainly not going to naysay them. Or perhaps you might like to read the book yourself and form your own opinion. I usually consider this the best course of action when weighing up the quality of a book, although that’s just me. And maybe you’ll think my book is horrible, but maybe you think all my other books are horrible too, so…yeah, I can’t help you with that. I’m leaving it up to you, Dear Reader. Suffice to say that if I thought the book was an absolute garbage fire, I wouldn’t have published it – nobody wants to have their good name connected to a garbage fire.

As far as b) goes, I haven’t released the book yet, and I have no idea what to expect in terms of return on investment. It could bomb, in which case I’ll have lost a considerable amount of sunk expenses, or it could go like the clappers, which would be wonderful and a great relief, but the outcome is by no means certain. Self-publishing is a gamble, like any kind of publishing, except the money you throw at it is your own. Either way, it’s unlikely I will ever truly get my ‘return on investment’, considering I spent six months of my life – when I could’ve been earning a proper wage as a teacher in my day job – writing the book. If writers were paid properly for their endeavours then perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but then perhaps I would be obliged to charge every reader a hundred bucks per copy to make my investment capital back in a decent period of time, and I’m not gonna do that. So no, it’s not a cash grab.

And no, I don’t think that every word I type is made of gold, either. Or I would be charging you right now to read this humble missive! Which…yeah nuh.

Basically, I just wrote a book, and it’s a good book, and I wanted to get it out there, and the usual avenues were unavailable to me.

Something you should know from the outset is that traditional publishing, like everything, is a business. When I submitted NO LIMITS to my publisher, they felt that it didn’t seem to be something they could market to the established readership I already had. The more mature protags in NO LIMITS, the darker themes of drug crime and family violence, the body count and the heavy action…all these things added up to something that skated the line between YA and NA, and didn’t fit well with the kinds of books I’d released before. So my publisher – who is pretty wonderful – couldn’t figure out quite how to market it and made the decision to pass, and I totally respect that. Trad pub is a business, and it has to watch the bottom line, and the decisions it makes are business decisions. That’s just the way it goes. Otherwise, all publishers would be charities, and we probably wouldn’t have a publishing industry in this country because it wouldn’t be able to support itself (and it’s pretty tough already, imo).

But I also couldn’t submit NO LIMITS to another trad publisher, because it was so closely linked to the Every series. So then I was stuck.

Maybe, if I was smarter, I would’ve been able to uncouple NO LIMITS from the original series, or rewrite parts of the book to make it more palatable to a solidly YA readership, and therefore more marketable for my trad pub. But…I’m not that smart. I was also too close to the story. I felt strongly about the themes, because Newsflash: drugs are an issue amongst teenagers! They’re also an issue in rural Australian communities, including my own, just so’s you know.

But the main problem was: I liked the book the way I wrote it. I believed in it. I didn’t want to change it. So yeah, maybe I am stubborn and proud…I dunno. Anyway, basically I was in a bind, until I realised I could put it out myself.

People say ‘there’s no right or wrong way to publish a book’, but I disagree. There’s a wrong way – write a crappy book, go through a vanity publisher who robs you and massages your ego, print up a few copies of your book at OfficeWorks or something and try to flog it at your local bookstore, have your legendary prose sprayed across the clouds in sky-writing… Those are all bad ways to publish. The good way to publish is to be business-like about it: go through a traditional publisher, or a small supportive indie publisher, or self-publish in an organised and professional way.

Now, to be sure, Self-Publishing Land is certainly peopled by many citizens who don’t proceed in a business-like fashion, and those citizens often tank (or at least produce some woeful books). But there are many highly professional writers who manage their own careers solely as self-published authors, and the number of those writers is ever-increasing. Some of them come from traditional-publishing backgrounds, which provides them with an entirely thorough awareness of the business of publishing and the creation of good books. Some of those writers go back and forth between traditional and self-publishing, and they’re called hybrid authors.

Remember how I said ‘publishing is a business’? Self-publishing is a business, too. Except in self-publishing, you back yourself to do the same thing a publisher does, and you champion your own book. Self-publishing isn’t (or it shouldn’t be) a vanity thing, and it isn’t a dummy-spit about traditional publishing. If you’re doing it right, it’s about the story, and taking the chance to really serve the story properly.

In answer to your lurking question, ‘Are you just gonna self-publish stuff now?’, my reply is: No. I will continue to pitch the bulk of my writing to my traditional publisher (mainly because self-publishing is a helluva lot of work). In fact, my next book WHITE NIGHT is coming out through my trad publisher in March next year. But if I write another book that’s not right for my publisher or my usual market, I will certainly consider self-publishing again. I’ve found self-publishing to be a deeply satisfying experience, because I know the responsibility, the control and the investment (creative and productive effort, time, money, belief) are all mine.

Self-publishing is also an interestingly democratic process – write a good book, do your homework, invest your money, work your butt off, and you too can publish whatever the hell you want – which pleases me on a number of levels. (You might be able to tell that I appreciate US author Beth Revis’s summation of the whole business: Welcome to the world of publishing. BYOB.) For another perspective, Darcy Conroy writes convincingly in this essay about how self-publishing is about self-respect and taking control of your writing career, and suggests that it might be a feminist choice as well – she cites the examples of the early 70s feminist presses, who took advantage of the technology to make their voices heard.

This year, I know of at least four trad-pubbed Australian authors* who have decided, like myself, to back themselves and put out their own books, which I guess makes us amongst the first wave of Australian hybrid authors. I imagine people might be looking on with considerable interest, waiting on the outcome of our experiments.

As for me, I just want to see NO LIMITS out in the world. I believe in it, and I hope it does well. Above all, I hope you like it. Because that’s the ultimate judgement of any book, whether it comes to you via a bookstore under the name of a traditional publisher, or as an ebook/print-on-demand book from the author herself, or as writing on clouds in the sky… It’s up to you, the reader, to decide.

And that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Let the dice fall where they may.

xxEllie

Oh, and PS: if you’d like to come to the book launch for NO LIMITS in Melbourne on August 18, I’d love to see you – please feel welcome to book here (it’s free!)

*Those other authors, if you want to look them up and support them are: Kylie Scott, Alison Croggon, John Birmingham and Judy Horacek, and you can find out a little bit about their experiences here.

 

NO LIMITS – Book Launch and further insanity

BEHOLD!

Yes, there will be a book launch for NO LIMITS. Yes, it will be crazy. Yes, it is on Friday August 18 at 6pm for a 6.30pm start, hosted by the awesome gals from The YA Room, and graciously venued by Dymocks CBD, Collins St, Melbourne. All gratis, and all welcome!

Sign on for: Food, drink, cake (which also counts as food), and many books. Me signing stuff. Daggy music, which cannot be blamed on the lovely staff of Dymocks. Short yet embarrassing speeches. Kids running around. Balloons (maybe? if you want to bring them, knock yourself out). Silly hats (as per balloons). Flannie shirts. Free booze. Heartfelt tears. All the fun of the fair, basically.

Please come along and say hi, I’m usually not this silly in person

Cover reveal: NO LIMITS

Yes! At last! The cover for my new book, NO LIMITS, has been released onto an innocent and unsuspecting public, and my evil plan for world domination is complete!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Okay, in all seriousness, I’m hideously excited for you to see it, and I really hope you like it.

Scroll down now, if you’re one of those dreadful impatient people. Otherwise, for those of you who are good with delayed gratification, read the Back Cover Blurb first:

New Australian YA romantic crime from the author of the award-winning Every series…

Boozer, brawler, ladies’ man – nineteen-year-old Harris Derwent is not a good guy.

His one attempt to play the hero – helping out his old flame, Rachel Watts – has landed him in hospital. Now injured, broke, and unemployed, he’s stuck back in the country, at his father’s mercy. Harris needs to pay off his dad’s debts, and fast. But working as a runner for a drug cartel is a dangerous path – especially if Harris agrees to narc…

Eighteen-year-old Amita Blunt is the perfect police sergeant’s daughter – practical, trustworthy, and oh-so responsible. Getting involved in Harris’s case was never part of the plan. But working at the hospital, she’s invisible – which makes her the ideal contact for a boy feeding information back to the police…

Harris and Amie’s connection is sizzling hot – but if the cartel finds out about them, things could get downright explosive. Backed into a corner, with everything at stake, it’s time for Harris and Amie to find out if love really has no limits…

“A novel of bruising empathy and excitable romance…This is modern Australia for so many growing up on the periphery right now, picked apart with exquisite and smart insight from one of Australia’s best crime and YA writers.” – Danielle Binks, Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology

OMG how cool is that? Cool, right? And Danielle Binks (contributor/editor of Begin End Begin) has blurbed the book in a most spectacular fashion, for which I’m hugely grateful. The book will be released in ebook and print from August 14, and pre-orders will be available from August 1.

But next up – a sweet sweet competition.

You – yes, you! – can be in the running to win a signed NO LIMITS poster simply by Tweeting, FBing or Instagramming the cover pic for NO LIMITS, shouting your enthusiasm. Please tag me into it @elliemarney along with the #NoLimits hashtag or I won’t know you’ve done it – this competition is active until 14 July 2017. Open international. Go get ‘em, lovelies.

A last request – this book is near and dear to my heart, and I want it to go wide. I really hope folks will love it as much as I do. But for that to happen, people need to know about it. So I’m asking everyone who drops by to add NO LIMITS to your TBR on GoodReads. And if the mood takes you, feel free to sign up for my newsletter here on my website – my next glorious missive will contain a two-chapter excerpt of the book…

And now for the splendour! Eek! Ohmigosh look at it, it’s bloody scrumptious!

TA DA!

Thanks to Reading Lark for hosting the cover reveal – a full list of bloggers who participated in the drop resides below. Props to Dane from Ebook Launch for cover design, Danielle Binks for service above and beyond the call of duty, and Kylie Scott, who gave her seal of approval.

So now we have our Harris. And now we have our NO LIMITS cover. I hope you love it as much as I do, and I hope you love the book even more! Until next time, rock on!

xxEllie

 

For your delectation, a list of ALL THE AWESOME BLOGGERS who have participated in the cover drop. Thank you all, lovelies!:

Tome Travellers – https://thetometravellers.wordpress.com/2017/06/27/cover-reveal-no-limits-by-ellie-marney/

Angel Reads – https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/angel-reads-11337717/cover-reveal-no-limits-by-ellie-marney-loveozya-5720204381

The Unfinished Bookshelf – https://theunfinishedbookshelf.com/cover-reveal-no-limits-ellie-marney/?utm_content=bufferb8442&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Airy Reads – https://scoundrelsandseduction.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/cover-reveal-no-limits-by-ellie-marney.html

The Book Bratz – http://thebookbratz.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/cover-reveal-no-limits-by-ellie-marney.html

Nicole Has Read – http://www.nicolehasread.com/2017/06/cover-reveal-no-limits-by-ellie-marney.html

Nick&Nereyda’s Infinite Booklist – https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/nick-nereydas-infinite-book-list-14508433/heres-cover-to-my-most-anticipated-book-year-5720150261

Diva Booknerd – http://www.divabooknerd.com/2017/06/phwoar-no-limits-cover-reveal.html

The YA Chronicles – https://www.instagram.com/p/BV0Zu-Xj6oH/

Kara on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PT0l9KOimQ&feature=youtu.be

Reading Lark – http://readinglark.blogspot.com.au/

The Fox’s Hideaway – http://skizzles22hu.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/cover-reveal-no-limits-by-ellie-marney.html

Genie In A Book – http://genie-inabook.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/cover-reveal-no-limits.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

#LoveOzYAbookclub – June 2017 author interview: Ted Dawe (Into the River)

Hey bookclubbers! This month’s book, INTO THE RIVER, is sure to create some interesting discussion, especially around the issue of how and why it was banned in New Zealand. But before we get into the serious business, I thought it’d be nice to ask the author, Ted Dawe, to answer some lighter questions about himself and his writing process. Thanks for joining in, Ted