Saturday Spotlight: Gennifer Albin

Bet you guys didn't see me doing a Saturday Spotlight this week, did you? I'm so sorry for my semi-hiatus, but sometimes school has to come before reading, writing and blogging! 

Fortunately for me, I got the chance to ask Gennifer Albin a couple questions before mid-terms about her YA books, Crewel and Altered! 

Here's my Saturday Spotlight interview with the Gennifer! Enjoy!

1) Welcome! I'm so happy to have you here Gennifer! You are one of my favourite authors! What inspired you to write the Crewel series?

I was thinking of a painting by Remedios Varo where girls are sitting in a tower embroidering and the fabric is becoming the world. I wanted to write a story about one of the girls who doesn’t want to be there.

2) Gender discrimination is a HUGE theme in this book. Was this something that your were expecting to happen while writing the story, or something that came along after?

I didn’t expect it. It developed very naturally on its own, and I had to be careful not to get on a soapbox about it. I wanted the idea to feel organic to the story so that readers would want to think about and ask their own questions about what it means to be a girl in that world.

3) The Crewel series is a book set in a future dystopian, and your character, Adelice, has a lot to deal with. How do you think she differs from other YA characters set in the same genre?

At the heart of most YA books is the search for identity, but what sets Adelice apart is her world and how she perceives herself as part of it. I think she copes by using humor and wit, which I hope sets her apart as well.

4) Maela, Pryanna, and Adelice all have different personalities, but similar abilities. Why do you think Maela and Pryanna have succumbed to the 'idealism' of Spinsters? (e.g being bossy, mean, spoiled and power hungry?).

There’s a good deal of nature vs. nurture going on with all of these characters, but I think some of these characters will surprise you by the end of the series. Each of them is looking out for her own interests, and I think that each girl does that in different ways according to how she sees her role in that world.

5) Was the process of developing the characters and the world of Arras a difficult one?

The characters came fairly easily, although some of them were added in later drafts. Building the world was much harder and required a lot of layering in of detail. I found myself thinking a lot about what the reader needed to know to understand this world, which meant lots of fine tuning and a fair bit of creativity.

6) On your Wattpad page, the first 6 chapters of ALTERED are up there, along with a (mini) prequel to the book. I've read the first couple chapters of Altered, and am DYING to get my hands on it! What can we expect from the characters (Adelice, Jost and Erik) while they're on Earth?

Secrets, fighting, lying, kissing. They’re going to find themselves in danger a lot, which forces them to confront their relationships with one another. Everyone is going to make tough decisions in Altered, which prepares them for the even tougher issues they deal with in book three.

7) Will we finally learn the story of Erik leaving his town, his rift with Jost, and what's happening with Sebrina and Amie?

You’ll learn a lot about all of that, and I think some of the revelations will surprise you. Erik really comes to life in this book.

8) Can we trust Dante? And is Kincaid another version of Cormac? Or is he like Al Capone?

Can you trust anyone? A far as Kincaid, he reminds me more of William Randolph Hearst crossed with Al Capone.

9) Is it weird writing both in the YA and Adult genres? Are very similar or really different?

Very different, but very fulfilling. It’s hard to switch modes sometimes, but it’s like a mental work-out.

SPEED ROUND QUESTIONS:

10) I saw a CREWEL photoshoot picture on your Twitter. Are the covers going to be redesigned?

No. The new designs will be sticking.

11) Do you think time and space can be weaved? If so, would you want to have Spinster powers?

I hope not, and no (except to maybe warp a spot of peace sometimes).

12) What book are you currently reading? And would you want to be that character?

I’m reading the Outlander series, and I don’t think I would want to be Claire, although she fascinates me.

13) Are any of the CREWEL characters based on anyone you know?

I tend to think Jost and Erik are modeled on my husband a bit, which embarrasses him.

14) What is one BIG pet-peeve that you have?

People who don’t use turn signals.

15) Do you have an organized writing process or is it all over the place? (Like mine).

Depends on the book. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all process.

16) Who has influenced you the most in your writing?

I honestly don’t know.

ABOUT GENNIFER:

Gennifer Albin is a recovering academic who discovered she could write books of her own, and people would actually read them.  She lives in Kansas with her family, but escapes daily to the world of Arras and other fantastical lands.

 

She appreciates strong coffee and bold imaginations, prefers her heroines with sass, and searches continuously for her next big adventure.

She is the author of the YA Crewel Series (which currently consists of Crewel and Altered), and the author of the adult series, Good Girls Don't.

For more information about Gennifer, check her out in these places bellow:

TWITTER: @GenniferAlbin

WEBSITE: genniferalbin.com

BLOG: genniferalbin.blogspot.ca

TUMBLR: midnightinarras.tumblr.com

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4906436.Gennifer_Albin?from_search=true

Rachel Vincent Giveaway!

Hey guys!

Sorry I've been a little MIA- I haven't been in class in awhile, and I've been catching up on A LOT of homework!

I'm really behind on reading, reviews and posts, but I'm currently working on a story too (but I'm not part of NaNo, this is something I've been working on for awhile), so everything has been pushed back! But don't worry, I should be posting regularly starting next week! I have a lot of exciting news!

Anyways, did you guys hear that Rachel Vincent is giving away books 1-4 of the Lux Series? And they're signed by Jennifer L. Armentrout! 

The little raffle copter thing to enter is on the side, so got enter! It's open to anyone 13+ living in the US and Canada only! The giveaway is only 7 days!

Have a good night guys!

Waiting on Wednesday: Secret Diamond Sisters (#9)

This week I'm waiting on Secret Diamond Sisters by Michelle Madow!

The cover is so pretty, and I really like the makeup on the model as well. Whenever I try to recreate that cats-eye effect on my eye, it NEVER turns out well!

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Savannah. Courtney. Peyton. 

The three sisters grew up not knowing their father and not quite catching a break. But it looks like their luck is about to change when they find out the secret identity of their long-lost dad—a billionaire Las Vegas hotel owner who wants them to come live in a gorgeous penthouse hotel suite. Suddenly the Strip's most exclusive clubs are all-access, and with an unlimited credit card each, it should be easier than ever to fit right in. But in a town full of secrets and illusion, fitting in is nothing compared to finding out the truth about their past.

Secret Diamond Sisters comes out February 25th, 2014! I seriously can't wait! :) 

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher: Review

Author: Catherine Fisher

Pages: 442

Release Date: May 3rd, 2007

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Incarceron is a prison so vast that it contains not only cells and corridors, but metal forests, dilapidated cities, and wilderness. It has been sealed for centuries, and only one man has ever escaped. Finn has always been a prisoner here. Although he has no memory of his childhood, he is sure he came from Outside. His link to the Outside, his chance to break free, is Claudia, the warden's daughter, herself determined to escape an arranged marriage. They are up against impossible odds, but one thing looms above all: Incarceron itself is alive . . .

This took me a while to get started on due to school and other interruptions, but once I started reading it without any distractions, I could not put it down.

Incarceron tells the story of Finn, a boy believed to be a Starseer, or a prophet of sorta that can find a way out of the Prison. Which happens to be alive. It also tells the story of the Warden of Incarceron's daughter, Claudia, who lives Outside in her own personal prison. The story weaves together, building a world that can never change, but characters that live a lifetime within the pages.

What I loved the most about this book was Fisher's ability to create such a world that controls the people within it as a real person- like a real tyrannt- and another world where the rulers have learned to become the human embodiment of the prison. 

This world jumps between the Prison (Incarceron) and the Outside (The Realm), and draws Claudia and Finn together through a mysterious key that can unlock all the secrets of both their worlds (literally and figuratively), and set them free.

Incarceron is a novel that I would recommend to everyone! It's a story that can turn any skeptic of YA fiction into a believer! I can't wait to get started on Sapphique! 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars :)

Blogger Life: Book Haul (#5)

Hey guys! Hope you're having a wonderful Monday!

So today, I was fortunate enough not to have any homework! YAY! Which means, I can finish Incarceron & Chosen tonight AND still have time to write!

I also got these two awesome books to add onto my VERY long reading pile:

I got Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor and....

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED! FINALLLLYYY! I put this book on hold in SEPTEMBER and just got it on Saturday! I'm also the first person to read the book :) Which makes me very happy! 

I also got these awesome e-books as well!

This one was actually for free and I have yet to start reading it. Someone recommended this to me on Goodreads, and after reading the synopsis, I just had to get it!

Synopsis: Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.

Dying wasn’t on sixteen-year-old Riley Richardson’s to-do list. And now, not only is she dead, but she’s stuck in a perpetual high school nightmare. Worse still, she’s stuck there with the geekiest, most annoying boy in the history of the world, ever.

In a school where the geeks are popular and just about everything is wrong, Riley has become an outcast. She begins a desperate quest to get back home, but her once-perfect life starts to unravel into something not nearly as great as she thought it was. And maybe death isn’t really that bad after all…

Welcome to Afterlife Academy, where horns are the norm, the microwave is more intelligent than the teachers, and the pumpkins have a taste for blood.

I actually got this on NetGalley and fell in LOVE with the cover, but I have no idea why it won't appear on my Kindle :( What sold me was the way they spelled the characters name! :D

Synopsis: Allison O'Malley's plan is to go to grad school so she can get a good job and take care of her schizophrenic mother. She has carefully closed herself off from everything else, including a relationship with Ethan, who she's been in love with for as long as she can remember.

What is definitely not part of the plan is the return of her long-lost father, who claims he can bring Allison's mother back from the dark place her mind has gone. Allison doesn't trust her father, so why would she believe his stories about a long forgotten Irish people, the Tuatha de Danaan? But truths have a way of revealing themselves. Secrets will eventually surface. And Allison must learn to set aside her plan and work with her father if there is even a small chance it could restore her mother's sanity.

This is actually one that I've actually started, along with Cracked. It's taking me forever to read them because I have library books to read and return, and other things in the way! But isn't the cover just so pretty? The synopsis is even more amazing!

Synopsis: Jenny Kramer knows she isn't normal. After all, not everybody can see the past lives of people around them.

When she befriends Ben Daulton, resident new boy, the pair stumble on an old music box with instructions for “mesmerization” and discover they may have more in common than they thought. Like a past life.

Using the instructions in the music box, Ben and Jenny share a dream that transports them to Romanov Russia and leads them to believe they have been there together before. But they weren't alone. Nikolai, the mysterious young man Jenny has been seeing in her own dreams was there, too. When Nikolai appears next door, Jenny is forced to acknowledge that he has travelled through time and space to find her. Doing so means he has defied the laws of time, and the Order, an ominous organization tasked with keeping people in the correct time, is determined to send him back. 

While Ben, Jenny and Nikolai race against the clock - and the Order - Jenny and Nikolai discover a link that joins them in life - and beyond death.

That's it for me. Technically, I'm still on my mini break, but I will be posting again sometime this week! 

Also, check out my new story: the Privileged Select on Wattpad: http://wattpad.com/user/TheLovelyGrace:)

Saturday Spotlight: Jennifer Mathieu

Hey guys! It's Saturday, and for this week's Saturday Spotlight, I'm featuring YA contemporary author, Jennifer Mathieu!

About Jennifer:

Jennifer Mathieu is a writer and English teacher from Texas. She writes young adult contemporary novels. The Truth About Alice is her debut novel, which comes out June 3rd, 2014.

Jennifer was kind enough to take some time out of her busy schedule to do an interview with me! So here it is! Enjoy guys!

1) Welcome to The Lovely Grace! I'm so glad that you took the time from your busy schedule for this! So The Truth About Alice is your first YA book- what made you want to write a YA contemporary as opposed to other popular genres like fantasy/paranormal or dystopian?

Thank you so much for having me! To answer your question, while I am amazed at those who can write fantasy/paranormal and dystopian and do all that complicated world-building, I have always been solidly grounded in the YA contemporary genre. It's what I read, for the most part, and what I love to write. I just love real life stories, I suppose, and character driven novels. I read a lot of nonfiction, too. I'm one of those people who believes everyone has a life worth writing about, so I think I just love exploring the real world as we live in it.

2) I know that you're a teacher AT an international school (she's not a teacher at an international spy school, sorry guys), so what was the writing process for you?

I would be the worst spy, by the way, because I'm terrible at spilling secrets on accident! For me, I write at night after I get home and my little one is asleep. I have a structure to it, and I'm fortunate to have a husband who is very supportive of my writing time. I have found that teaching makes me more productive because my students inspire me and my limited time makes me very efficient. I set word limits for myself each day and try to meet them - even if it's junk on the page at least it's somewhere to start.

3) What inspired you to write a story like The Truth About Alice? From the synopsis, it seems to be a very heavy book (emotional wise- if that's how I can describe it). Were there some subjects that you were a little unsure about because of the audience? Or just how true it is to some problems that teenagers may be dealing with? Or were you fine writing a book that talks about bullying, gossiping, and sexual harassment?

I really respect teenagers as people and as readers. I think they can handle intense topics and I also trust that if they feel a book is just not right for them, they will put it down. I didn't set out to write an "issue" book per se, but I wanted to write about how we all feel like outsiders at one time or another. All the characters in The Truth About Alice have demons they're fighting - even the popular kids - and they all feel unsure about themselves from time to time. I think all teenagers feel like that - all people do. As for what inspired me to write this specific story - when I was a teenager in the early 90s I read an article in Seventeen magazine about a girl who sued her school because of some horrible, sexually graphic graffiti in a bathroom stall. That story stayed with me because I couldn't imagine how horrible that girl must have felt - just so isolated and hurt. It was the seed for the story all these years later. I also always wanted to write a book that was told from multiple points of view, so I tried that, too.

4) Why did you decide to write about a girl that has a bad reputation (due to unfortunate circumstances) in different perspectives and not her own? Was this something you thought of since the beginning or just happened during the writing process?

What a great question. From the beginning I always wanted to tell it from other people's perspectives because that's what gossip is - everyone just talking about someone and that one person's voice sometimes not getting heard or getting lost in the shuffle. This is especially true about girls who develop so-called "bad reputations." Alice does have a chapter at the very end, but yes, the book mostly focuses on other voices that alternate from chapter to chapter.

5) Personally for me, I have trouble with my own characters that I have to punish them sometimes (my protagonist right now has a waffle ban for being uncooperative- actresses are such divas!). Did you run into trouble while developing your characters?

Your diva actress had that coming! LOL! One of the joys of writing this book was that because I was switching perspectives from one character to the next, just as I was starting to struggle with one voice it was time to take a break and pick up with another one. It always felt very fresh and fun to write as a writer. However, my characters do go through quite a bit. I especially felt for Kelsie's character - maybe even more so than Alice. Sometimes I thought, how can I do this to this poor girl? My characters really do become real for me. I still think about them.

6) What do you think makes this book stand out from other YA contemporary novels?

I love so much YA contemporary that I hope people love my book as much as they love some of the terrific titles out there right now! As for what might make it stand out - I think the character of Kurt is interesting because he's sort of a nerd but he's still really into Alice as a girl. He's still a teenage boy in that way. So often the "nerd" is this one-dimensional, asexual creature who has his nose in a book, but Kurt is a genius and also still hot for a pretty girl in this really honest, human, teenage boy way. He was so much fun to write - maybe my favorite character to write in the whole book.

7) This is one question that I always have to ask all my guests: what are you reading right now?

I just finished a wonderful, wonderful book called How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford that came out in 2009, and I just started a new release called Winger by Andrew Smith.

8) Would you want to be the character in the book that you're reading at the moment?

Another great question. The book opens with Winger getting his head stuffed into a toilet by some jocks, so right now I say no! ;-) The book has received some great reviews and I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy it.

9) Do you think your characters will survive the plot of said book?

I hope so because Winger seems very likable to me so far. :-) Although I've been warned there's a sad plot twist in this novel, so I'm getting my tissues ready.

10) I wanted to ask you some random questions about yourself, but your bio on your website tells a lot of awesome things about you! You speak Spanish, wrote a story about an ape dancing in a library (100% in my book btw), and were a former journalist. I don't know what to ask anymore. Have you ever considered taking horse riding lessons? Or try something crazy like... doing cheese rolling?

I am open for anything! I took belly dancing classes once but never horse riding lessons. ;-) But I'm a big believer in continuing education. What can I say - I'm a teacher!

11) What is one thing that you have learned as a student, a teacher and a writer that will be useful to students who have to balance four types of lives? (Family, Writing, Social and School).

I'm very type A and am a big believer in staying organized and making lists and maximizing my time - that is not a very romantic answer, but it's true. I've been that way my whole life and it helps me get a lot of things done. I try to dedicate time for all the important things in my life and sense when one aspect isn't getting "fed" and try to correct that. But not everyone operates that way, so that advice might not work for everyone. Some people need to focus deeply on one thing at a time. So perhaps know yourself is one piece of advice. Something else I think that would apply to everyone is ground yourself in what you love and things will fall into place. Surround yourself with friends you love and write what you want to write, not what you think you should write. And it's okay to feel overwhelmed sometimes. I think it means you have a curious mind and an energetic spirit.

And 12) Will we need any tissues while reading this book? And if so, how many? I just want to be prepared!

Without giving too much away, I do believe my book ends on a hopeful note but yes, there may be some tears Sometimes a lot of them. (I'm sorry!) But while there are a lot of heavy moments, I think there are some sweet and even funny moments, too. Elaine's character made me laugh several times as I was writing her chapters. She's a trip.

Wanna know more about Jennifer? Check out the links bellow!

 

Website: http://www.jennifermathieu.com/index.html

 

Twitter: @jenmathieu

 

Tumblr: Jennifer Mathieu XOXO

 

Facebook: Jennifer Mathieu

 

Have an amazing Saturday guys!

 

Fangirl Friday: William Lacey

It's Fangirl Friday! And this week, I'm featuring William Lacey from the Lacey Chronicles. 

I was supposed to feature him last week in honor of Eve Edwards's guest post, but I made a mistake while making the post, and it was scheduled for THIS WEDNESDAY. Fortunately enough, I caught it before then, but now I had to put Will for this week than last week.

So here he is: Lord William Lacey, Earl of Dorset!

Isn't he dreamy? That's model George Elliot up there (he's what I pictured Will to look like). :)

Here are some fun facts about Will:

-He's the eldest of four (two brothers, one little sister).

-He is blonde and has a face of an angel (described by Ellie).

-He is from the Elizabethan period, and is an avid jouster (is that how you spell that?).

-Despite the fact he's an Earl, he helps his villagers to keep the village looking proper.

-He's only eighteen.

William Lacey is the eldest Lacey brother- and the heir of the Lacey title and financial ruin. When we first meet him in the Other Countess, he is a young boy whom just received his father's title. He kicks Arthur Hutton (his father's resident alchemist and money leech), and his daughter, Ellie Hutton, whom he (by default) resents as well.

Years later, Ellie and Will meet again- him as an Earl about to be married to a noblewoman, and her as a penniless girl with a worthless Spanish title being dragged around the country by her father's experiments. They don't recognize eachother and try to be friends, but as her secret comes, everything comes falling apart. As his marriage to Lady Jane approaches, she reappears in his life again, and his attraction to her is undeniable. Will is then left with a choice: marry a proper lady to save his family from financial ruin or follow his heart's desire.

So what makes Will worthy of this week's Fangirl Friday?

He'll do anything to make sure his family has a roof under his head, even if it means sacrificing his happiness. But in the end, Will will do everything in his power to get everyone (including himself) what they really deserve!

Happy Friday guys!