Mundie Moms

Friday, September 9, 2011

Guest Post with Author Beth Kephart


Today's the first stop in Beth Kephart's The Story Behind The Story Treasure Hunt and today we have Sophie, one of the main character's from You Are My Only.

The (furious) metamorphosis of Sophie
Several years ago I began to write a novel for adults that had a certain Sophie as its focus. She was in her late thirties and her boyfriend, Vin, had recently left her. She was alone, a writer, and trying to piece together the unresolved oddments of her past. Strange things were being left on Sophie’s doorstep—signs, masks, even a pot of soup—and the only thing that Sophie knew for sure that she was being lured to an abandoned asylum on the other side of the woods by people she wasn’t certain she could trust.

The Sophie chapters of that book, which I had titled Nothing is the Color Gone, were written in third person past tense. They had the fist of poetry slammed through them. They were terse and tense and, perhaps, a tad brittle. The novel opened like this:

Outside Sophie’s bedroom window it had all begun again: The hydrangea blooms rush whispering. The owl concentrating its wings. The fox scotching beneath the underskirt of the viburnum. Hurry and hold.
Don’t move, she told herself. Stay still.
The moon was fold and specter, a shimmer past white, a texture. The moon was trespass, and between the actual and the imagined a line had been blurred; someone was closing in.
Calm yourself, Sophie thought. Grow up. But with Vin gone a whole month now, her heart was a wild, torn-up muscle. Her heart was threadbare, and untrue.

Sophie’s story was, then, a recovery story, a remembering story. But what would happen, the editor Laura Geringer asked me one day last summer (was it really only last summer?), if I reversed things? What would happen if I told the story of Sophie as a 14-year-old girl?

I was about to set off for a week in the Cayman Islands to celebrate my father’s birthday with family. I took pen and paper with me. I wrote the first 25 pages of Sophie young. I knew who she was. I knew what she had lived through. But what was the sound of her voice? What did she, at just that moment, understand about the life that she was living? That was my challenge, and I took it on—changing rhythms in my head until Sophie was first-person and exceedingly present:

My house is a storybook house. A huff-and-a-puff-and-they’ll-blow-it-down house. The roof is soft; it’s tumbled. There are bushes growing tall past the sills. A single sprouted tree leans in from high above the cracked slate path, torpedoing acorns to the ground.
Splat and crack. Another acorn to the ground.

Writing Sophie young was a furious incarnating process. I knew who she was and I knew the danger she was in. But I had to write on and on and furiously on to know just what or who might save her.

I hope my father and my family forgive me for not chasing the bright Cayman Island fish during that week of mad creating.
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Here's a little bit about You Are My Only, which is Sophie's story:

Emmy Rane is married at nineteen , a mother by twenty. Trapped in a life with a husband she no longer loves, Baby is her only joy. Then one sunny day in September, Emmy takes a few fateful steps away from her baby and returns to find her missing. All that is left behind is a yellow sock. Fourteen years later, Sophie, a homeschooled, reclusive teenage girl is forced to move frequently and abruptly from place to place, perpetually running from what her mother calls the “No Good.” One afternoon, Sophie breaks the rules, ventures out, and meets Joey and his two aunts. It is this loving family that opens Sophie’s eyes, giving her the courage to look into her past. What she discovers changes her world forever…
The riveting stories of Emmy and Sophie—alternating narratives of loss, imprisonment, and freedom regained—escalate with breathless suspense toward an unforgettable climax.

This book will be released on October 25th, 2011 via Egmont USA.

To find out more about You Are My Only, visit Beth's site, and follow her on twitter. You can also find out more about her book on Egmont's site.

You can pre-order the book from: Amazon| Barnes & Noble

Thank you to Pam from Bookaliciouspam for making this guest post possible and to Beth for visiting with us today!

Freebie Friday- All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

Happy Friday! Thank you to MacMillan, we're giving away a published copy of Gabrielle Zevin's newest release, All These Things I've Done. Here's a little bit about the book:

By Gabrielle Zevin
Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Released on September 6th, 2011

In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidentally poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight--at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family.




Be sure to visit Gabrielle's site, and follow her fall tour here.
To find out more about the book please visit MacMillan's website.

The Giveaway:

This is open to residents in the US & Canada who are 13 yrs & older. To enter, please fill out the form below. This giveaway ends on September 18th, 2011

Interview with The Shattering author, Karen Healey


Today we're excited to have The Shattering author, Karen Healey stop the blog to answer a few of our questions about her newest release.

Congratulations on your recent release of The Shattering! What inspired you to write this story and did you find it hard to write from three points of views?

The story came from Keri - I thought of someone who prepared for everything, but couldn't cope with something she hadn't prepared for, especially because the idea of magic in her logical world didn't make any sense to her. Writing from three points of view wasn't very difficult, since they all felt very distinct to me, but editing them was a little more tricky - my editors felt Keri and Janna were too similar in voice. In the end, I wrote down lists of exclusive vocabulary for both of them and went through the whole manuscript with a fine-toothed comb. It was less organic airy-fairy inspiration and more dogged determination that got me through that one!

I really liked the different elements you incorporate into The Shattering. You have a great mix with your rich mythology, the folklore, suspense, romance, and your murder-mystery. Which of these elements did you enjoy writing into your story the most?

It's the mix itself that appeals to me most! I really like multi-genre stories, and the interesting things you can do with one genre playing off another. But I've got to say, I really liked writing the scene where SPOILER and SPOILER break into SPOILER'S house. Classic crime tropes, so much fun! I also enjoyed writing the romance scene where SPOILER and SPOILER get it on. And then there's the climax, which I really can't even mention because of all of the SPOILERS, but it tossed all those genres together in a huge blender and I loved it.

One of the things I admire about your writing with The Shattering, is you're not afraid to tackle some of the tougher themes like suicide, racism and bullying. As an author, why do you feel it's important to have these themes in your book?

I don't think all literature for teenagers should be all doom and gloom, and indeed, even in this book, which does have tough themes, I'm more than happy to chuck in a few jokes (and, of course, make outs). But teenagers do encounter racism, suicide, and bullying - not to mention a fear of coming out, depression and anxiety - and I do think it's important to address those issues in fiction. For people who have encountered these issues personally, a book can be a way telling them that they're not alone, that other people feel these things or have been hurt by these same injustices. For teenagers that haven't encountered those issues, reading about them can be extraordinarily eye-opening, and encourage compassion and understanding, which I think are really great things!

Speed Round Questions:

Back packing in Europe or taking a cruise to the tropics?
AUGH I love Europe but loathe backpacking and like the tropics but hate tiny cabins! OKAY EUROPE.

Chocolate or vanilla?
Chocolate, every time

Reading a book in a quite cafe or reading beside the pool?
Cafe. I am a person who burns.

Fall or Winter?
AUTUMN.

Vampires or Werewolves?
Vampires, totally.

Paranormal or Contemporary?
Can't we all just get along, she said piteously.


Seventeen-year-old Keri likes to plan for every possibility. She knows what to do if you break an arm, or get caught in an earthquake or fire. But she wasn't prepared for her brother's suicide, and his death has left her shattered with grief. When her childhood friend Janna tells her it was murder, not suicide, Keri wants to believe her. After all, Janna's brother died under similar circumstances years ago, and Janna insists a visiting tourist, Sione, who also lost a brother to apparent suicide that year, has helped her find some answers.

As the three dig deeper, disturbing facts begin to pile up: one boy killed every year; all older brothers; all had spent New Year's Eve in the idyllic town of Summerton. But when their search for the serial killer takes an unexpected turn, suspicion is cast on those they trust the most.As secrets shatter around them, can they save the next victim? Or will they become victims themselves?
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You can find out more about The Shattering by visiting Karen Healey's site, follow her on twitter & Live Journal and Little Brown Books for Young Readers
's site.

You can also purchase the book from Amazon & Barnes & Noble.

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