Mundie Moms

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Clockwork Princess Snippet



Cassie treated fans to another Clockwork Princess snippet! This one I swear is a killer.... 

“It has been the privilege and the honor of my life to know you.”

What!?! NO! This sounds like a goodbye.... I really hope this isn't Will and Jem saying goodbye to each other. It does sound a little too formal for Will, or maybe I'm just having that wishful thinking. After reading this one line from a classic oldie popped into my, "Don't go breaking my heart." I think Cassie is going to do just that. I have a feeling that CP2 is going to end on one of those bittersweet moments that will have me all huddled in the fetal position rocking back and forth, sobbing like a little baby. Don't laugh, you know you'll be right there with me. 

Interview with VESSEL author Sarah Beth Durst

I'm thrilled to have author Sarah Beth Durst on the blog today! She graciously took the time to answer a few of my questions I had for her about her upcoming release, VESSEL. Check out that cover! It's stunning. I'm a huge fan of Sarah's writing and the world's she creates, and I can not wait to read this book. I have a feeling you'll be adding this to your TBR lists after you the book blub, and my interview with Sarah. Here's a little bit about the book:


Published by: Simon & Schuster
To Be Released on: September 11th, 2012
Pre-Order from: Simon & Schuster | Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble 

In a desert world of sandstorms and sand-wolves, a teen girl must defy the gods to save her tribe in this mystical, atmospheric tale from the author of Drink, Slay, Love.Liyana has trained her entire life to be the vessel of a goddess. The goddess will inhabit Liyana’s body and use magic to bring rain to the desert. But Liyana’s goddess never comes. Abandoned by her angry tribe, Liyana expects to die in the desert. Until a boy walks out of the dust in search of her.

     Korbyn is a god inside his vessel, and a trickster god at that. He tells Liyana that five other gods are missing, and they set off across the desert in search of the other vessels. For the desert tribes cannot survive without the magic of their gods. But the journey is dangerous, even with a god’s help. And not everyone is willing to believe the trickster god’s tale.

     The closer she grows to Korbyn, the less Liyana wants to disappear to make way for her goddess. But she has no choice: She must die for her tribe to live. Unless a trickster god can help her to trick fate—or a human girl can muster some magic of her own.


Hi Sarah! Congratulations on your upcoming release. How would you describe VESSEL in 5 words or less?

Epic desert fantasy.

What inspired your desert setting?

In my novel ICE, I wrote about the Arctic, and I immersed myself in a frozen world.  For VESSEL, I wanted to write about a desert and live in a land of sun and sand.  But I didn't want it to be an ordinary desert; I wanted it to be the most fantastical desert that I could imagine with wolves made of sand and serpents of unbreakable glass and monstrous worms and gods and goddesses... I see writing as the ultimate armchair traveler's experience.  You get to live inside a place that you'll never see (because it's too far or simply doesn't exist), and you can take yourself on adventures that you'd never otherwise experience.  And if you do it right... you take readers with you!

I'm really intrigued with your story's synopsis. Is your story inspired by or based on a particular lore or mythology?

Yes and no.

It is inspired by various mythologies.  (For example, my hero is a trickster god.)  I wanted my desert land to feel steeped in a rich oral storytelling tradition, so I worked hard to create a mythology that feels real.

I'm looking forward to reading Liyana's story. What is one thing you admire about your main character?

Liyana is destined to sacrifice herself so that her goddess can inhabit her body and use it to summon the magic that will keep her clan alive.  And Liyana is willing to do it.  She doesn't want to die, but she's practical and fearless and willing to sacrifice herself to keep her family -- especially her four-year-old brother -- alive.

What did you have the most fun creating, the setting, the elements or your characters?

I loved creating the desert in VESSEL.  As a kid, I used to spend hours drawing imaginary maps, filling them with impossible animals and plants, inventing people to live there...  So writing this novel was, in many ways, fulfilling a childhood dream.

Thank you to Sarah for stopping by Mundie Moms today!
Thanks so much for interviewing me!

Please be sure to visit Sarah via her: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook
Don't miss your chance to meet Sarah in person. Find out where she's going to be traveling to here

Thoughtful Thursday: Blogging, Fun and You

True story, I've been working on this post for months now. I've edited it over and over again, I've tossed out everything I've wanted to say and started over one too many times (I can't even imagine writing a book), found all these great links to people who have talked about blogging before to link up to in my post, had ideas to start a weekly feature about blogging, only to scrap that and start all over again. There's so many things I've wanted to say on here about blogging and for some reason nothing was sounding right. Then yesterday I read a blog post a blogger friend of mine wrote and it included a lot of things I wanted to say, only her post is written perfectly! It's bold, to the point and 100% honest. You can read April's post here

Why book blog?

I swear this is a question I get asked a lot, especially from my husband who has asked me this a lot in the almost 4 years I've been book blogging. My answer, because I love it. What's not to enjoy about spreading book love, working with great authors and publishers, meeting a lot of new friends, and connecting readers with their favorite authors through the various live author chats I've hosted and introducing people to new books?! I love to read. I always have, and I always will. Book blogging is a way for me to take what I love and turn into what Mundie Moms currently is. 

The bottom line is I do this because I enjoy promoting books. I love it when I've connected other readers to a book based on my review or through talking to them in person about book.  I stopped keeping track of how much time I put into blogger each week a long time ago, because the amount of time I spent on here shocked me. It took a long time to explain to my husband that even though this hobby of mine takes up a lot of time, I enjoy what I do, and what I have going on. I swear if I got paid to do this, I'd be rich (at least I'd like to think so).  No, I do not get paid for what I do. Nor would I want to. I can not fathom ever accepting money for doing a review. My reviews are my honest opinion over the book I've read, and I feel like if I was paid for that it would sway me in my feelings for the book. Plus, I already put enough pressure on myself with all that I'm doing, why would I want to add more pressure? It wouldn't be worth it to me, and it would take the fun out of what I'm doing.

Despite all the stress that does come with blogging, and the hours I put into it, when I hear "I picked up a book based on your review and loved it", or "I can't believe I get to talk to my favorite author", I feel like I've accomplished my goal with my book blogs. I love what I do, and the moment I stop enjoying it is the moment I stop blogging. 

Blogging Advice 101:

There's a lot of great blogging advice out there. Some of it great and other stuff I've cringed at reading. Let me just say this, YOUR BLOG is a REFLECTION of YOU! 

DO NOT GET HUNG UP ON NUMBERS! - Yes, number are important, but I don't get why we as bloggers tend to get so hung up on numbers. Don't get hung up on your blog's success by basing it on the number of comments you get on a post or the number of followers you have. It does not matter if you have 20 comments on a post or none. . Seriously, there's been many times I've had one or two comments on a post, but I've had 200 hits on it. Just because people aren't commenting does not mean they're not reading your blog. I used to have the time to comment on every blog I visited, but I don't any more. But, that doesn't mean I've stopped reading blogs. 

Stop worrying about the number of followers you have. Who cares if someone has 5,000 followers on blogger, and 2,000 on facebook, and 3,000 on twitter. It's so easy to lose focus of your goal in blogging when you're so worried about your numbers. Yes, in the beginning I spent time worrying over my numbers and freaking out, because I didn't have certain numbers like someone else had. Really, who cares. It was stupid of me to compare the numbers on my new blog with someone else who's been around longer than me. Even if they weren't I still shouldn't have wasted so much of my time focusing on what other people had and what I didn't. Enjoy the readership you have!

STOP COMPARING YOURSELF to other bloggers! I swear a lot of the fun in blogging gets lost in the chaos of bloggers comparing their blogs to others. It's human nature for us to compare what we do, and who we are with others, but why? It's much more fun spending time supporting each other than it is comparing ourselves to what other blogs have, are doing, and have accomplished. Enjoy your blog for what it is and don't lose site of the goal you want to obtain on your blog. Have fun being you on your blog.

BE CREATIVE, BE UNIQUE, BE YOU! - Your blog should be a reflection of you. Change it up, have fun with it. Do new things. Be different. Stand out. 

I love that every blog I visit is different. Sure many of us take part in the same memes, but blog wise we're all unique and creative in some way. I love it. It would be so boring if each of us had all the same features, posted reviews for all the same books at the same time. I love visiting blogs for the variety of content they feature, and for who they are. Meaning I have a handful of trusted blogs I go to, to get book recs from, others I love visiting just to see what they've been up to lately. Others I love visiting to see what kind of goodies they got the week before. I swear I get all giddy over seeing what books other bloggers got in the mail. Aside from reviews, and wows, the mail box memes are another way I get my book recs from. 

On being different/standing out- I went the different route when I started MM's and choose black as my background, which is a big no no with blogging. Why did I choose black? If you're read Cassie's TMI series you'll know 1) where the name Mundie came from and 2) my original tag line for the blog was, "SHADOWHUNTERS Looking Better In Black Than Our Than The Widows of Our Enemies Since 1234". Mundie Moms is both a Cassie Clare fansite and YA book blog. Though I've changed the tag line of my blog since I first started it, the black back ground has remained. I've received a lot of criticism for it, and that's okay, because I'm happy with the black. Now at some point it would be nice to change the back ground, but I don't have the time to go through 3,500 posts to make sure color coding and all that was changed over.

HAVE FUN! - Blogging should be fun. Sure, it's incredibly time consuming, but it's still fun for me. 

I'll admit that sometimes, okay lately a lot of the time, I feel like I've fallen behind on everything with blogging, but that's because outside of blogging, I'm a stay at home mom, room parent, 1st VP on my kid's school's PTA Board, my kid's school's Scholastic Book Fair co-chair coordinator, and Co-Volunteer Coordinator. Contrarily to what some people believe, stay at home moms don't have all the time in the world to sit around and read, eat bon-bons and watch Ellen. Which would be nice, but at least for me it doesn't happen. So in the midst of all that I have going on each day, blogging is something that's just mine. It's something I can sit down and enjoy doing for a bit. It's my escape from the craziness of everything else that's going on. As you can see with all that I have going on, it's also why I am a little behind on my emails.....

Along with having fun, do not get caught up with the blogger drama. I was criticized publicly for not coming out and speaking openly about some of the bigger dramatics that happened this year in the blogging world. Believe me, it's not that I didn't have thoughts to air on the matters, because I did. My silence does not mean I supported what was going on, because I didn't. I spent a lot of talking to Sophie about my thoughts and possible posts on the topics, and in the end we decided to stay mum, and keep the focus of the blog on what we had going on. 

CONTENT- It's okay to post every day if you want to. It's okay to post a review each day, every other day, or once a week. It's okay to post daily, every other day, or to take a week off. It's okay to skip memes even if you started them. It's okay post only one thing each day or to post three things. 

For the longest time I felt like I needed to have a book review posted each day (on both my blogs), along with the memes I was doing (some of which I still am), and a whole bunch of other stuff. WHY!?! I sometimes still ask myself that question. Why did I feel the need to freak out over having all this stuff posted on my blog? I don't know. I quickly learned that it was stupid to think that, because I ran myself into the ground. Not only that, I filled my blog up with content that wasn't always fitting of my blog and it's readers. Stuff got buried to quickly and I learned it's better to have quality content that quantity. 

Now I will totally admit there's still some days where I cringe at the amount of stuff that gets posted. My exception to the rule is Cassie's stuff. Regardless of what I have going on that day, anytime Cassie posts news, or snippets from her book than those get posted on blog. Same goes with the TMI movie news. So some days I may have one thing posted and other days I might have 5 posts. 

Your Blog's Success- I don't define my blog's success by it's numbers. To me my biggest reward, and sense of accomplishment comes from feeling like I've done what I've set out to do when someone picks up a book based on one of my reviews.

Nothing is more successful to me in running my book blog then hearing someone's excitement over a book they found, because they read one of my reviews. I feel such a huge sense of accomplishment when I hear someone say that or read that in someone's comments or email to me. Same goes with readers's excitement over getting to talk to their favorite authors via one of my live author chats. I love what I do, and I don't pay attention to what anyone else does. You can't compare your blog's success with that of another. 


Now that I've rambled on much longer than I had planned on, I'd love to hear from you. What do you think makes a blog successful? What advice would you give to a new blogger? 

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