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Best Fiction for Young Adults

PAST PERFECT made YALSA’s 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults list! My roommate and I celebrated with cupcakes.

The full BFYA list is here: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/bfya/2012. What follows is my annotated list of the BFYA titles that I’ve read so far. Get ready for some personal anecdotes that don’t tell you anything useful about the books in question.

CHIME, by Franny Billingsley: This was my favorite book of the past year. Briony is an amazing character.

STRINGS ATTACHED, by Judy Blundell: 1950s showgirls!

BEAUTY QUEENS, by Libba Bray: Read this for book club.

WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE, by Sarah Dessen: I actually entered in copyediting changes for this. That was a long time ago.

THREADS AND FLAMES, by Esther Friesner: My claim to fame with this book is that I noticed an early draft of it used the phrase “kina hora” incorrectly. I pointed this out to the editor so that Esther could change it. I was like, “If there is one thing my mother taught me, it is when to say ‘kina hora.’”

RUBY RED, by Kerstin Gier: Time travel!

LEGEND, by Marie Lu: This is not in my typical genre, but when I saw that it got five stars, I had to check it out. Guys, it was so good.

EXPOSED, by Kimberly Marcus: Counting this title on this list may be cheating, since I read this as a manuscript on submission like three years ago. Presumably it has changed since then. I’m just trying to get my numbers up here.

THE APOTHECARY, by Maile Meloy: London, history, and magic– they get me every time.

DELIRIUM, by Lauren Oliver: All-around amazing, cannot wait to read the follow-up.

ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS, by Stephanie Perkins: I would totally make out with St. Clair, which is probably weird, since he is many, many years younger than I am.

DIVERGENT, by Veronica Roth: As you may recall from a previous blog post, my team won children’s book trivia, in part because I remembered all five factions of DIVERGENT. Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, Erudite. BOOM.

OKAY FOR NOW, by Gary Schmidt: I just finished this book. It was also amazing. It’s not about topics that I would think I would care about, but the writing is so extraordinary that it simply didn’t matter.

WONDERSTRUCK, by Brian Selznick: I read this the week after I saw HUGO. I was having a very Brian Selznick time.

THE SCORPIO RACES, by Maggie Steifvater: Magical horse races! It’s like horse races, which are my favorite, only MORE MAGICAL.

THE GIRL WHO CIRCUMNAVIGATED FAIRYLAND IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING, by Catherynne Valente: Read this for book club, too.

So counting my own book, I’ve read 17 out of the 113 BFYA titles. That’s kind of impressive. But I’m sure I can read more. Can and will.

January 26th, 2012 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boston Is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So.

I’ve just returned home from a long weekend in Boston. I grew up just outside of Boston, and I always miss it. New York is an amazing city, but I hold a special place in my heart for my hometown.

This weekend I hit up many of my old haunts, including the Pill, my favorite dance party in Allston, and Soul-le-lu-jah, my favorite dance party in Cambridge. I also tried out some new haunts, like the South End Buttery.

Good lord I love things made with butter.

I did NOT get to go to my favorite Boston-area ice cream shop, Cabot’s, which was the inspiration for the ice cream shop in PAST PERFECT. I was terribly sad not to go to Cabot’s, especially since I looked at their menu and saw that they have all sorts of SEASONAL FLAVORS, like eggnog and pumpkin-spiced ice cream. Is there anything that I could want more than SEASONAL FLAVORS?! I ask you.

Below is a poem by E. B. White (author of CHARLOTTE’S WEB, one of my favorite books, not to mention THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, which is also a pretty good book in its own right). It’s called “Boston Is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So.”

When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.

In Boston, life is smoother far,
It’s easier and freer,
Where every boy’s a Harvard man
And every man’s a skier.

There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.

For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.

The people’s lives in Boston
Are flowers blown in glass;
On Commonwealth, on Beacon,
They bow and speak and pass.

No man grows old in Boston,
No lady ever dies;
No youth is ever wicked,
No infant ever cries.

No orthodox Bostonian
Is lonely or dejected,
For everyone in Boston
With everyone’s connected.

So intricate the pattern,
The barroom of the Ritz
Becomes a jigsaw puzzle
Each life a piece that fits.

Each Boston girl is swept along
Down the predestined channel
To where she meets a Boston boy
Alert in Brooksian flannel,

Magnificent in fallen socks,
His hair like stubble weeds,
His elbow patch an earnest of
The fellowship of tweeds.

When Muzak plays in Boston,
It wakes celestial stings,
And I can sit in Boston
And think of many things.

For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I feel that Boston is
The perfect state of grace.

After a week of Boston
I rise and take the train
And I am always very glad
To see New York again.

New York seems doubly beautiful,
Its air as clear as Heaven’s;
New York – where life is always
At sixes and at sevens,

Where no one ever marries right,
And girls go off their trolley,
And young men go to NYU,
To Fordham, and to Poly,

Where hackmen have peculiar names
And relatives afar,
And one can watch the Chrysler spire
Bisect the morning star.

January 17th, 2012 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

Notes from my sickbed

Things I have accomplished today:

1. reading the January issue of Glamour magazine cover to cover
2. doing one load of laundry
3. making and drinking a hot chocolate
4. ordering an earring holder from Etsy
5. napping

Things I have not accomplished today:

1. changing out of pajamas
2. writing
3. washing my face
4. brushing my teeth
5. leaving the house

Hopefully I will recover from this cold soon, since it has turned me into a disgusting person. (Though, hopefully, a disgusting person with a charming new earring rack.)

On the upside, someone who is not me managed to accomplish something more remarkable than drinking a hot chocolate; namely, Brian (who maintains leilasales.com) has accomplished updating this website! Some of the changes are small, like there are words on here that used to be illegible that are now legible. Some of the changes are bigger, like how there are videos of me on the links page. Take a look around!

P.S. ACCOMPLISHMENT NUMBER 6: I wrote a blog post. Suck it, illness.

January 10th, 2012 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

The CBC Extreme Trivia Challenge

Because I seem like a relatively smart person, people are often surprised to learn this about me, but: I am TERRIBLE at trivia. Terrible. I don’t know the capitals of anywhere, and I can’t tell you which actor appeared in that movie with that other actor, and I would be hard-pressed to name five baseball players, let alone to name which one hit the most home runs. The one time I remember getting a question right in a game of bar trivia, it was about Dawson’s Creek.

The one exception to this rule is the Children’s Book Council’s annual Extreme Trivia Challenge. I am terrible at trivia. But I am actually really good at children’s book trivia.

I have two second-pace trophies from CBC Trivia in 2007 and 2009. But I REALLY wanted a first-place trophy. (Or at least not NO trophy, a la 2008 and 2010.)

I spent the entire walk over to Scholastic rehearsing the five factions from Divergent with two of my colleagues. (“Abnegation. Amity. Candor. Erudite. Dauntless. Abnegation. Amity. Candor….”) When we arrived we were split into twelve teams of five. It was immediately apparent that my team was playing to win. Which is good, because that is how I like to play. As my mother has always said to me, “If you’re going to play, why would you play to lose?”

Some personal/team highlights:

- Remembering the name of the Batchelder Award. (Two years in School and Library Marketing pays off!)

- Getting the book title mashup whose clue was phrased something like “Four mystery-solving children turn out not to be such ideal companions.” (Answer: The Boxcar Children Make Terrible Pets.)

- Also getting the book title mashup The Chocolate War Horse, even though I personally have read neither The Chocolate War nor War Horse.

- Correctly answering the Phantom Tollbooth question because I totally just reread that book before Halloween because I thought I might want to dress up as Tock the Watchdog!

- Remembering the full names and titles of five of the seven Babysitters Club members. (I forgot Jessi’s last name—it’s Ramsey, if you were curious—and Dawn. How could I forget DAWN? What is wrong with me?)

- Remembering which play Anya appears in, in Gabrielle Zevin’s All These Things I’ve Done. (Answer: Macbeth.)

- The final in-round question was—I swear this is true—“Name all five factions in Divergent.” I was like, “Guys, I’ve got this.”

We won. It was amazing. Even the hosts (Gabrielle Zevin and Carolyn Mackler) were impressed. Even their husbands were impressed. I tried to act like I’m not such a competitive person that this totally made my week, but it totally made my week.

Then I took my bunny trophy down to Brooklyn, where I had dinner at Lauren Oliver’s house. Lexa Hillyer, Jess Rothenberg, Courtney Sheinmel, and some guys were there, as well. I bragged about being a winner, and then we wrote songs together and roasted s’mores in Lauren’s fireplace. It was a magical night.

November 16th, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (2)

You’re invited: NYC book launch party

On Saturday, October 1, at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I will be having an NYC book launch party for PAST PERFECT! And you are invited!

To make this already-exciting event more exciting still, this is going to be a joint book launch party with my friends Jocelyn Davies (author of A BEAUTIFUL DARK) and Anne Heltzel (author of CIRCLE NINE). I’m lucky to have so many talented friends who have YA novels coming out the same month as mine.

Come celebrate with us! Full facebook invitation is here: https://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=232859976766897.

Remember, the other book launch event that I have scheduled is at Brookline Booksmith, in Massachusetts, on October 9. So if you live near NYC or Boston, then I hope to see you soon.

September 21st, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

paperbacks!

Today is the paperback pub date for Mostly Good Girls! That means you can walk into a real live bookstore and purchase a real live paperback copy of my book for NINE DOLLARS AND NINETY NINE CENTS, which is LESS than it was in hardcover!

FURTHERMORE, the paperback edition of Mostly Good Girls includes a teaser chapter from Past Perfect, which isn’t even out until October.

FINALLY, the paperback looks adorable on a bookshelf. And I should know, because I have about ten copies on my bookshelf right now.

To order the paperback from Indiebound, click here.

To order it from Amazon, click here.

To order it from Barnes & Noble, click here.

Or you can go to your local independent bookstore to pick up a copy in person.

Hurrah!

September 6th, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

upcoming PAST PERFECT release events

PAST PERFECT goes on sale exactly one month from today! Although I’m not doing a proper tour, I am doing a couple events near my home, and near my mom’s home. In other words, if you come to my Massachusetts book release event, you will get to meet my mom.

NYC: At 6pm on Wednesday, October 5, at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City, I will be reading from PAST PERFECT as part of a Teen Author Reading Night (which will also include Jocelyn Davies and Anne Heltzel). This event is free and open to the public. More details here.

Boston: At 2pm on Sunday, October 9, at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts, I will be doing a release event for PAST PERFECT. This event is free and open to the public. More details here.

More events to come, hopefully. I would love to see you at either or both! (Probably not both. Unless you are my stalker. Or, possibly, my mom.)

September 4th, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

less than two months til PAST PERFECT

As you may be aware, Tuesday, October 4 is a VERY IMPORTANT day. It is Alicia Silverstone AND Rachel Leigh Cook’s birthdays! And, perhaps more to the point, it is the day that my new novel, PAST PERFECT, comes out.

I am working on getting leilasales.com updated with all sorts of pertinent information, like a picture of the book’s cover, and some links so you can preorder it, and some preliminary reviews. But this is hard for me, because I do not have any design skills or computer skills. Pretty much the only thing I can do, in life, is type and eat chocolate, and honestly I don’t even type properly. Computer programming is entirely beyond me.

So, in the interim, while this website is getting up to speed, here is just a photo of the PAST PERFECT cover:

And here is a link to the Goodreads page: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10637697-past-perfect.

More to come! And only 53 days to go!

August 12th, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (0)

Notes from the Fire Island writers retreat

I’m here in Fire Island with fellow YA writers Lauren Oliver, Lexa Hillyer, Elizabeth Miles, Courtney Sheinmel, Jess Rothenberg, and Rebecca Serle. To give you a sense of what it’s like here: I just saw a butterfly float by our writing table.

We have a schedule, here on Fire Island. Every morning we wake up around 9 or 9:30. Actually, I wake up around 9 or 9:30, only to find that everyone else is already awake. I can’t say when they wake up, due to how I am asleep. Then we write on the porch until lunchtime, taking breaks only to observe passing butterflies or eat more cereal.

Around 1pm we walk downtown. The “walk” is roughly 1/8th of a mile, and the “downtown” is one restaurant, one pizza shack, and a grocery store. We go to the grocery store and buy ridiculously overpriced sandwiches, which we take with us to eat on the beach. Also sometimes chips and dip. We sit on the beach for a couple hours, and Lauren frolics in the waves, while Lexa, Courtney, and I wade in up to our knees and then somehow get knocked over and talk about how we almost drowned.

Around 3pm, we come back home. I shower and put on real clothes (by which I mean a T-shirt and an American Eagle sweatskirt from the year 2002). Then we write for the rest of the afternoon. Around 6pm Lauren makes guacamole, which we finish eating by around 6:03. Then I go for a walk and encounter many, many deer and one solitary water rat. I come back to the house and work a little more, and then we eat dinner, and then we maybe work a little more, and then we make s’mores on the grille, and then we play Apples to Apples, only with special, literary-themed rules that we have invented that I do not entirely understand. Around midnight, we head to bed.

I don’t know how long it would take for me to grow bored of this schedule, but I suspect a very, very long time.

July 28th, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (1)

missed connections

Today on the subway Jocelyn Davies and I saw a girl reading MOCKINGJAY and a guy reading CATCHING FIRE. On the very same subway car! We tried to stage a meet-cute between them, but they seemed to be not interested in our matchmaking skills. THEIR LOSS.

I enjoy working in kids’ books because sometimes a particular book will catch on, and then everyone will be like, “Say, have you read these ‘Harry Potter’ books?” Or, “I was hearing about something called ‘Twilight’ on NPR today…” Or two people on the same subway car will be reading Suzanne Collins books. And I can be like, “Oh, yeah. I read that years ago. Old news.”

July 19th, 2011 in | Permalink | Comments (0)