Ellie Marney's Blog, page 6

#LoveOzYAbookclub April 2023 title announcement – NIGHTBIRDS

Hello to a new month of bookclub! And hello to our amazing new home on Instagram – have you checked it out yet? Go do that!

This month’s read is the debut YA fantasy NIGHTBIRDS by Kate Armstrong. Kate runs The Exploress podcast, which deals with all things ‘women in history’ and the threads of 1920s glamour and magic run through her new book – here’s the blurb:

The Nightbirds are Simta’s best kept secret. Teenage girls from the Great Houses with magic coursing through their veins, the Nightbirds have the unique ability to gift their magic to others with a kiss. Magic—especially the magic of women—is outlawed and the city’s religious sects would see them burned if discovered. But protected by the Great Houses, the Nightbirds are safe well-guarded treasures.

As this Season’s Nightbirds, Matilde, Aesa, and Sayer spend their nights bestowing their unique brands of magic to well-paying clients. Once their Season is through, they’re each meant to marry a Great House lord and become mothers to the next generation of Nightbirds before their powers fade away. But Matilde, Aesa, and Sayer have other plans. They know their lives as Nightbirds aren’t just temporary, but a complete lie and yearn for something more.

When they discover that there are other girls like them and that their magic is more than they were ever told, they see the carefully crafted Nightbird system for what it is: a way to keep them in their place, first as daughters and then as wives. Now they must make a choice—to stay in their gilded cage or to remake the city that put them there in the first place.

You can buy NIGHTBIRDS at a 20% discount through Readings Books if you use the code ‘LOVE2LOVEOZYA’ at checkout. And if digital or audiobook are more your style, you can find them here and here.

Hope you love this month’s amazing OzYA read! Give us your comments on the bookclub Insta page, and see you there!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub March 2023 title announcement – SPICE ROAD

Hello and wow it’s Autumn already now we are in March 2023! This month we are very excited to announce our book is SPICE ROAD by Maiya Ibrahim.

The first book in an epic fantasy series for fans of Sabaa Tahir, Hafsah Faizal and Elizabeth Lim, set in an Arabian-inspired land. Raised to protect her nation from the monsters lurking in the sands, seventeen-year-old Imani must fight to find her brother whose betrayal is now their greatest threat.

In the hidden desert city of Qalia, secret spice magic awakens affinities in those who drink the misra tea. With an affinity for iron, seventeen-year-old Imani wields a dagger like no other warrior, garnering her the reputation as the next greatest Shield for battling the dangerous djinn, ghouls, and other monsters that lurk in the sands beyond city limits.

Her reputation has been overshadowed, however, by her brother who tarnished the family name after he was discovered stealing their nation’s coveted spice – a tell-tale sign of magical obsession. He disappeared soon after, believed to have died beyond the Forbidden Wastes, and leaving Imani reeling with both betrayal and grief.

But when Imani uncovers evidence her brother may be alive and spreading their nation’s magic beyond the desert, she strikes a deal with the Council to find him and bring him back to Qalia before he can reveal the city’s location. Accompanied by Qayn, a roguish but handsome djinni, and Taha, a powerful beastseer whose magical talents are matched only by his arrogance, they set out on their mission.

Imani will soon discover there are many secrets that lie beyond the Forbidden Wastes – and in her own heart – but will she find her brother before his betrayals endanger the fate of all of Qalia?

In this epic and action-packed fantasy, one young heroine navigates the treacherous road between protecting the ones you love and staying loyal to the place you call home.

I hope everyone enjoys Spice Road. We also have the discount code (LOVE2LOVEOZYA) now active for you to purchase the book for 20% off at Readings Books. Thank you so much to Readings! You can also find the book in digital here. Look out for our author interview with Maiya Ibrahim later in the month on our FB Group. We look forward to chatting with you all.

Emm xx

#LoveOzYAbookclub February 2023 author Interview – LEANNE YONG (Two Can Play That Game)

Welcome to another bookclub author interview! This is where we ask the questions, and the author gets to tell us all the gory details about their book’s creation and inspiration. This month, for our first New Year title TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME, we have lovely debut author Leanne Yong in the hot seat…

Did you have a playlist for this book? Do you have a playlist for writing? Can you tell us about it?

I do in fact have a playlist… which I compiled long after the book was written! When I write I get so focused I can’t really hear anything or think about anything else, so even when I do have music on I don’t actually know what’s playing at any given time.

I find it a lot of fun to compile a playlist after, that links into the book itself. For example, the one for Two Can Play That Game has quite a bit of video game music, and the one for my next book that’s set in the world of community musicals is almost all showtunes. I tend to choose music that’s less about overall vibes and more about the emotions and themes in the book.

Please share something about your personal connection to the story you chose to tell in your book…

This book is my seventh manuscript, written about 8 years into my writing journey. So many people around me were signing with agents and getting book deals. I… was not. There was a sad, quiet kind of certainty starting to set in that my writing would never be ‘good enough’, that I needed to do more and be more though I didn’t know how, and a big part of this book comes from that place in my life. It is, however, a more hopeful kind of story, because that’s what the me writing it needed.

Wouldn’t you know, this was the book that finally landed me an agent and a publishing deal. A happy ending, you could say, but I don’t think life is that simple and I’d like to think that’s also reflected in the book. For me at least, that questioning of myself and my skills has never fully gone away – the goalposts are always moving – and a lot of what my main character Sam eventually comes to learn and accept is the kind of grace I struggle to give myself (but can easily give my characters!). So it’s always a good reminder to me, one that I hope will encourage others as well!

Comfort reads – which books do you turn to when you need a break from it all?

So I have to admit that although this book is contemporary YA, my comfort reads tend to fall under sci fi and fantasy. I think because there’s a distance from the real world that lets me get away from it all. I’ve gravitated toward quiet, healing kind of novels, especially after the past few years.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison always leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy, as do all the books in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series. I’ve re-read The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner more times than I can count, and anything by Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove, Anxious People) will be a book I can curl up with after a really rough day.

There is one contemporary YA though! I did fell head over heels for It Goes Like This by Miel Moreland, which starts with a band that has broken up, and is about how they reforge friendships and find healing again when they get together for a one-night-only charity concert.

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?

When I was writing the first drafts, I called it Indie Game Rom Com because I legitimately couldn’t think of a decent title. I had to find one when I queried agents, and got so desperate I picked one I was meh on – it went out as Name Of The Game. When talking with my editor and publisher we unanimously agreed it was not great. After a lot of thought I wrote a three-point essay about why Good Game, Sam Khoo would be a perfect title. Then I threw in a one-liner email after going, ‘Forgot to add, maybe Two Can Play That Game could work’. And you all know how that ended up!

What books have you been reading lately? Any recs?

I’ve recently been reading quite a few ARCs from friends who are also debut authors and there’s SO many great books coming out this year! I’ve been loving Bianca Torre Is Afraid Of Everything by Justine Pucella Winans, The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim, Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee, Damned If You Do by Alex Brown, and Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai. I’m incredibly excited for everyone who’ll get to read them this year!

As for books that are already out, I loved Take A Bow, Noah Mitchell by Tobias Madden (it has video games and musicals, my two weaknesses). Little Thieves by Margaret Owen is a goose girl retelling that has my whole heart, and I absolutely cackled my way through Unnecessary Drama by Nina Kenwood. I also absolutely blasted through Ellie’s The Killing Code because as an escape room designer I am a sucker for codes and ciphers and mysteries!

Thank you, Leanne!  Thanks for getting your sillies on with #LoveOzYAbookclub J And thank you to all bookclub readers – keep an eye out for the discussion post for TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME on the FB group page at the end of the month!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub February 2023 title announcement – TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME

Hello friends, and happy 2023! I love diving into the brand new year, and it’s always a privilege and a pleasure to be joining with my co-mod Emmaly to welcome everyone back once more for another year of bookclub. I hope your holiday break was fun, and your start to 2023 was smooth.

We’re kicking off this year with a debut book by the lovely Leanne Yong – TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME was launched only a few days ago, and it’s a delightful romance set in the world of gaming, described by reviewers as “incredible Australian debut is a hilarious, heartwarming story of family, Australian-Malaysian culture, friendship and first love.” Here’s the blurb:

Sam Khoo has one goal in life: create cool indie games. She’s willing to do anything to make her dream come true – even throw away a scholarship to university. All she needs is a super-rare ticket to a game design workshop and she can kickstart her career.

So when Jay Chua, aka Jerky McJerkface, sneakily grabs the last ticket, it’s war. Knowing how their Australian-Malaysian community works, Sam issues him an ultimatum: put the ticket on the line in a 1v1 competition of classic video games, or she’ll broadcast his duplicity to everyone. Thank you, Asian Gossip Network.

Meeting in neutral locations, away from the eyes and ears of nosy aunties and uncles, Sam and Jay connect despite themselves. It’s a puzzle that Sam’s not sure she wants to solve. But when her dream is under threat, will she discover that there is more than one way to win?

You can grab your copy of TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME through our new bookclub partner, Readings Books – use the code LOVE2LOVEOZYA at checkout to receive a 20% discount. If digital is more your style, you can find the book here.

I really hope you enjoy our first title of the bookclub year! Keep an eye out for updates here or at the bookclub FB page, and wishing you happy reading!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub December 2022 title announcement – THE KILLING CODE

Hello everyone and welcome to our last book of the year for #LoveOzYAbookclub. For December I have decided to do Ellie Marney’s THE KILLING CODE. 

Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signals Intelligence facility in Virginia. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: Government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.
 
To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall—gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships—and romance—that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they’re hunting is closing in on them…and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret

I hope everyone enjoys this book as much as I did. And I think it’s about time we did one of Ellie’s books here on book club! We also have the discount code now active for you to purchase the book for 20% off with our brand new bookclub partner, Readings Books – use promo code LOVE2LOVEOZYA at checkout. Thank you so much to Readings! If digital or audio is more your style, you can find them here. This book will carry us through December 2022 and January 2023, so our discussion will be late Jan 2023 and we will be announcing our next book for book club in early Feb 2023.

Have a great holiday and happy reading!

Emm xx

#LoveOzYA November 2022 title announcement – LIFE IN OUTER SPACE

Happy November, friends! We’re one book away from the end of the bookclub year… Now that the Halloween pumpkins and nutmeg scents are drifting away, can you almost smell the crisp pine of yule logs and brandy-soaked raisins for the Christmas puddings? (Arrggghhh! we all scream in it’s-not-Christmas-yet)

But this month we’re doing a flashback read of a contemporary YA rom-com classic: LIFE IN OUTER SPACE by Melissa Keil. I love this book so very much! It’s the perfect combo of humour, romance, and geeky pop culture references. As a special treat, the book has been reissued with a brand spanking new cover just this year. For those of you who haven’t encountered Sam and Camilla and their delightful nerdery yet, here’s the blurb:

A young adult romantic comedy about a movie geek and the dream girl he refuses to fall in love with.
 
Sam Kinnison is a geek, and he’s fine with that. He loves horror movies, hanging out with his nerdy friends and playing World of Warcraft – and until Princess Leia turns up in his bedroom, he doesn’t have to worry about girls.

Then Sam meets Camilla. She’s beautiful, friendly and completely irrelevant to his life. So Sam is determined to ignore her, except that Camilla has a life of her own – and she’s decided he’s going to be part of it …

Boy meets girl. Boy tries to lose girl. Or does he?
 
Life in Outer Space is Melissa Keil’s first brilliantly sweet and funny YA novel. It was the inaugural winner of the Ampersand Prize, Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing award for debut authors. This special edition of the beloved #LoveOzYA rom-com includes a bonus new chapter.

I very much hope you enjoy LIFE IN OUTER SPACE this month, and you can order the book here at Boomerang Books, or here through our new online partners Readings Books – we’ve switched reading partners, and while we don’t yet have a free shipping code, it’s on its way. If reading in digital is more your style, you can find the ebook here.

Thank you to everyone joining in this month! You’re welcome to jump aboard the FB group page anytime to share the LoveOzYA love, and keep an eye out for later in the month when we have a very special interview with this month’s author, Melissa Keil. Happy reading!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub October 2022 author Interview – POPPY NWOSU (Hometown Haunts)

An anthology is always a slightly different beast from a full length novel, and we have a great interview this month with Poppy Nwosu, who gives us some insight into the process of putting our October read HOMETOWN HAUNTS together. I’d love to see more horror fiction in Australian YA, so I’m all for it! Read on…

Hi Poppy! Can you tell us a bit about the backstory for the anthology, and how it came about?

Hi Ellie and everyone, thanks so much for choosing our anthology for your fantastic #LoveOzYA Book Club, I feel super proud!

This anthology really started as a passing thought, and one that I never expected to become reality. I thought it would be such a fun project to try to put together an anthology of amazing #LoveOzYA authors, as I was very inspired by the fantastic Begin, End, Begin (edited by Danielle Binks). But I really loved the idea of making this new anthology very horror-focused, because there wasn’t really anything like it already in Australian young adult fiction (that I knew of!). Also, I was excited for the project for the purely selfish reason (haha) that I really adore horror as a genre.

Poppy Nwosu

At first, it really felt like a pipe dream that would never happen, but the wonderful team at Wakefield Press worked hard to make it a reality. It was such a huge team effort to pull this book together and, if I’m honest, one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever worked on, purely because I felt so much responsibility toward our wonderful contributing authors and I really wanted all the writers involved to have a very positive experience. So yeah, that definitely kept me up sleepless on many nights! Though in the end, I feel so proud of how this anthology turned out and what everyone worked so hard to achieve. It’s been a real dream come true to be able to work with so many amazing people to bring this book into the world!

Is there something about writing short stories that appeals to you? Do you find writing short fiction or whole books tougher?

Okay, I feel my answer to this question will be a little unexpected, but when I initially began working on putting this anthology together, I hadn’t actually thought too deeply about how I would go about writing my own short horror story, as I was much too distracted with all the organisation and practicalities of the project. Until suddenly, I started receiving these incredible and exciting short horror stories into my inbox from heaps of amazing authors that I really admired and … it finally hit home that I had to write one of my own! And … I hadn’t really worked on many short stories at all before! So yeah, I had a small bout of imposter syndrome that hit very heavily.

So to be honest, writing a short horror story was a new challenge for me but something I was really excited to dive into. I spent a lot of time thinking about the world around me and the things I fear. In truth though, I am a long-form storyteller at heart, so it is much easier for me to write an entire book over a shorter story.

Please share something about your personal connection to the story you chose to tell in this anthology…

My story, Nature Boy, is a very personal one. I really leaned into the exact type of horror I personally love, which features quiet, strange and unsettling vibes. I was heavily inspired by the strange worlds of Shaun Tan’s Tales of the Inner City and Paul Jennings’ Grandad’s Gifts. I know not everyone would describe that type of weird atmosphere as horror exactly, but to me that is the beauty of the horror genre, within it there are so many different ways to express fear or a horrifying experience. To me, being unsettled and not quite able to put a finger on what is wrong, feels like true horror, and those quietly unsettling and strange worlds are something I’ve always been really fascinated by.

I also drew heavy inspiration from the chaotic state of the world at the time of writing, with fires and covid and the spread of misinformation on the internet, as well as my own personal experience of having multiple people, both close to me and further away, die by suicide all during a very short period of time. In my story, the unravellings were a way for me to unpack my feelings around those tragic deaths. I always work out my own thoughts through the act of writing and this particular story, Nature Boy, was a real snapshot of my mind at that time.

What TV show/movie is getting you through right now and why?

I am an enormous Star Wars fan and have been ever since I was a kid. It was really the first world that I ever became lost in, and is an enduring love that has lasted many years. I have very complicated feelings around the latest batch of Star Wars releases, however the new show Andor (still currently airing as I write this) is just everything I could have ever wanted from Star Wars. It’s so exciting to me to watch a show like this, so yeah, it is definitely an obsession at the moment!

What books have you been reading lately? Any recs?

I have been making my way through Aussie YA author Helen Scheuerer’s absolutely wonderful Curse of the Cyren Queen series. I’ve read three books so far and have one to go, and it is such a deliciously dark fantasy read, with an epic world, complex characters and such an exciting plot! This series has become a bit of a comfort read for me, as I know that whenever I pick up a new book within it, the story is always so consistently good. I highly recommend it!

Thank you so much for having me, Ellie!!!

*

You’re very welcome Poppy! It’s always a pleasure to have you to visit, and thanks for getting your sillies on with #LoveOzYAbookclub J

Bookclubbers, stay tuned for the discussion post for HOMETOWN HAUNTS, coming on the group page very soon!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub October 2022 title announcement – HOMETOWN HAUNTS

Hello! I’m back again! First of all, a giant thank you to my co-host Emmaly, who carried the load for running bookclub for the last two months while I was off gallivanting around Australia and the USA on book tour – thank you so much, Emm <3

Secondly, we have a new book for October, and it’s perfect for the spooky season: this month’s read is HOMETOWN HAUNTS, a collection of scary stories by some of the best up-and-coming authors in Australia right now, beautifully put together by Poppy Nwosu (herself an author of three wonderful YA novels, and a contributor to the collection).

Here’s the blurb:

One bite of an apple from a family shrine unearths hungry ghosts. A poison garden unfurls a polite boy’s deepest, darkest desires. Interfering with an Indigenous burial site unleashes ancestral revenge, to a metal soundtrack. An underground dance party during Covid threatens to turn lethal. And on the edge of a coastal rainforest, a grieving sister waits to witness a mysterious ‘unravelling’.

This #LoveOzYA anthology – the first to focus entirely on horror – unites a stellar cast of Australia’s finest YA authors with talented new and emerging voices, including two graphic artists.

Contributors are Wai Chim, Sarah Epstein, Alison Evans, Lisa Fuller, Margot McGovern, Poppy Nwosu, Michelle O’Connell, Emma Osborne, Emma Preston, Marianna Shek, Holden Sheppard, Jared Thomas, Vikki Wakefield and Felix Wilkins.

The stories in this wide-ranging collection dig deep and go hard. While some are straight-up terrifying rollercoaster rides, others are psychologically rooted in our society’s deepest fears and concerns: acceptance and fitting in, love and loss, desire and temptation, and the terror of a world threatened by catastrophic change … and even collapse.

I very much hope you enjoy this great mix of horror stories! (horror books are always dear to my heart) You can order HOMETOWN HAUNTS through Boomerang Books and receive free shipping using the ‘loveoz’ code, or you can find the ebook right here if you prefer to read in digital.

Catch us on the FB group page later in the month for a chat with the book’s editor, Poppy Nwosu, and happy reading!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub September 2022 title announcement – CAME BACK TO SHOW YOU I COULD FLY

Happy Spring everyone in the Southern Hemisphere and Fall/Autumn to those in the North! This month we have decided to do another classic Aussie YA, CAME BACK TO SHOW YOU I COULD FLY by Robin Klein.

Seymour is bored and lonely, and running from a gang of kids when he opens a back-lane gate. And there is Angie. She is older than Seymour, confident, cool and alluring, and she treats him with the affection of an older sister. Seymour is captivated—through Angie he is awakened to the fun and adventure in life. But Angie has a dark side—a secret that threatens to destroy her. And as Seymour begins to understand that all is not well he knows he has to help her.

CAME BACK TO SHOW YOU I COULD FLY won a Human Rights Award for Literature in 1989. It also won the 1990 Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award, Older Readers, and was shortlisted for the 1990 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the 1990 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, as well as being named a White Raven book at the 1990 Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Say A Little Prayer, the film version, was released in 1993.

Robin Klein was born 28 February 1936 in Kempsey, New South Wales, into a family of nine children. Leaving school at age fifteen, Klein worked several jobs before becoming established as a writer, having her first story published at age sixteen. She would go on to write more than 40 books, including Hating Alison Ashley (adapted into a feature film starring Delta Goodrem in 2005), Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left (adapted into a television series in 1992), and Came Back to Show You I Could Fly (adapted into a film directed by Richard Lowenstein).

You can order this month’s title through Boomerang Books and receive free shipping using the ‘loveoz’ code at checkout, or the ebook is available here. I hope you enjoy this read for September and I look forward to discussing it, and other Robin Klein books, later in the month.

Emm xx

#LoveOZYAbookclub Aug 2022 author interview: KAY KERR (Social Queue)

Hi and welcome to our Author Interview with Kay Kerr author of this month’s title SOCIAL QUEUE:

What gave you the idea to set SOCIAL QUEUE in the first months of university?

I was thinking a lot about bullying, particularly during the release of my first novel Please Don’t Hug Me, when I was getting DMs and emails from young people about their experiences with bullying in high school. I was very aware of not wanting to put young readers back in that experience itself, but wanting to show a character rebuilding their self-esteem and sense of self after the fact. So, it seemed like a hopeful and logical place to start, this post-high school, start of ‘real life’ time when you are still a teenager but finding your way towards what kind of person you want to be. It also felt like a natural progression from my first novel, although they are not linked in any way, because PDHM was set in the last few months of high school. I suppose there is some debate or discussion around whether or not a book is still YA if it is set after high school, but for me, I wrote the book for young readers, and I have always seen it as firmly in the YA readership space.

Your book has a cool title. But what might it have been called if it wasn’t called what it is now?

Thank you! My partner will be thrilled as he came up with the autistic pun while we were playing around with potential title ideas, so I can’t take credit for it at all. I just dived back into the folder on my computer and found it was first called autistic YA romcom, which has a certain ring to it, don’t you think? I had a list of title ideas, including the extended Zoe Kelly’s Social Queue, as well as Crushing It, One More Time With Feelings, Obvious, and Are You Mad At Me? That last one doesn’t even have anything to do with the plot, but it is a feeling I am very familiar with.As with my first novel, I like to brainstorm a heap of title ideas, but when I land on THE title, I usually know pretty quickly.

Why do you write for young adults?

What started as a purely self-motivated choice to revisit a particular time and age because I struggled with it, has grown into a desire to write stories for young people, particularly autistic young people, because life is weird and hard and messy, and art helps. Connecting with young readers has turned out to be the best part of this whole writing gig for me, so I want to keep doing it for as long as I can.

What are your perfect writing conditions?

I used to have a very set routine around my writing–what kind of tea I would drink, and what snacks I would have on hand. Now I am so time poor with my kid, and life, so all I dream about and need is an empty house. And a growing assortment of devices from my physio to try and stop me getting a sore back. Welcome to my 30s, I guess.

If you could take three things to a deserted island, what would they be?

Look, my very literal brain went straight to an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Broadcast). Get me off that deserted island as soon as possible, thank you. I love nature and being outdoors, but I am the last person who would ever sign up to go on Survivor or Alone or any of those kinds of shows. Normal life is enough of a challenge for me. So yes, an EPIRB, a water purifier or canister of some kind, and my own pillow from home. I can’t sleep without it.

Thank you so much Kay for answering all our questions and for taking part in our book of the month!

Look out for our discussion post on SOCIAL QUEUE on the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook Page in the coming days and to find out about our special September book of the month.

Emm xx