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Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Book Giveaway and Author Interview: Sayantani Dasgupta (The Serpent's Secret) Middle Grades

I have THREE copies of The Serpent's Secrect (Thank you, Brent!) up for grabs! WIN a copy of The Serpent's Secret! Post a comment  about the interview to the blog. Include comment, your first name, city, state and email address. I will never share your email address with anyone. Deadline for posts is noon MST  April 24. Winners will be chosen randomly by Randomizer. Please check your email after noon MST on April 24 when I notify winners. Winners have 24 hours to respond to my email. Books will ship to winners from New York. Good luck and start posting!                  
                                                               Read my review here


The Serpent's Secret
Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond, Book 1
by Sayantani Dasgupta
Scholastic Press
2018
368 pages
ISBN: 9781338185706

Meeting Sayantani in Dallas at Texas Library Conference in April 2018! So exciting to meet you in person! Thank you for your kind words, your exciting book (s) for children (and adults), and your unflagging generosity. The Serpent's Secret is my favorite MG of the season (as everyone knows!)

Thank you, Sayantani, for agreeing to answer my questions! It's wonderful to have the opportunity to share your answers with your young (and older) readers. They will get to know a little more about you as a person. The Serpent's Secret is a breakout book and I am honored to have met you in person and continue to be honored for your friendship and Tweets on Twitter! 


Interview With Sayantani



1.          The Serpent’s Secret is a planned series. Where are you right now as a writer? Are you finished with book 2 and in edits? Is book three started? Are all of them finished?

Hi Pamela! Thank you so much for having me! I’m honored!

Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond is planned as a series – I have some ideas of how many there will be, but I’m not sure I’m ready to tell! For the time being, I can tell you definitively that Book #2 (title and cover to be revealed soon!) will be out February 2019 and I think it’s safe to say that there may be some more adventures in Kiranmala’s future…

I’ve finished and handed in Book 2 – which means that Scholastic is in the midst of making ARCs/galleys! So that’s very exciting! And I might be working on Book 3 as we speak!


2.          How many edits or changes did your manuscript go through from querying and landing your agent to landing a publisher? Once the publisher got your draft, how much editing was done? How long did it all take from your first draft to published?

Well, this is an interesting story. I wrote The Serpent’s Secret for my now teenage children back when they were middle grade readers. I wrote it because I realized that although books were more diverse than when I was young (and could literally find no representations of myself in books or media) they weren’t still that diverse across genre. My son in particular was a big fantasy fan, and I wanted to give him and his younger sister a heroine who looked like them! I probably finished that very first draft of The Serpent’s Secret back in 2009 or 2010 without an eye initially to publishing it. It was a fun family project in which I wrote a modern day adventure story for my children based on the Bengali folktales I heard from my grandmother and loved so much as a kid.

By 2011, however, when I first took the completed out with a different agent than the one I currently have, we got a long list of very polite rejections. I think now that the story might not have been ready, but also that the market probably wasn’t ready for an immigrant daughter adventure fantasy with humor and space elements. I mean a book with folk tales and string theory side by side might have been a little hard for folks to fathom! Back then, editors kept asking that I keep Kiranmala’s voice but write her story as realistic fiction. I’m so happy to see the market has changed and there is so much more diverse science fiction and fantasy getting published now.

For the next five or so years, I wrote other manuscripts, edited The Serpent’s Secret on my own many times, attended innumerable workshops and conferences, and worked with a critique group. Eventually in 2016, I signed with my current agent, Brent Taylor. Once I signed on with him, the tempo of things changed a lot! I did a very quick round of edits with him, and within a month of signing with him, we had the book at a very exciting six publishing house auction! After so much time thinking it would never happen, I couldn’t believe it. I kind of still can’t believe it! Then I worked with my editors at Scholastic on another very quick round of edits and the rest is intergalactic demon slaying history!


3.          Besides folklore and middle grades, is there another genre you’d like to write? What would it be and why?

When I was young and dreamed of being a writer, I always thought that I would write grown up, literary fiction. Part of the reason is because I started thinking of myself as a writer only after being introduced to wonderful novelists of color like Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez, Gabriel García Marquez, Paule Marshall, and Salman Rushdie. But I think I’d also internalized this idea that to write my immigrant daughter story, I’d have to make it very serious, with lots of mangoes, and monsoons, and lots of crying involved. I’d internalized this message that literature from writers of color had to somehow put our pain on display. I’m so lucky I eventually realized that my story wasn’t that, and my fictional voice wasn’t that, and it didn’t have to be. I wanted to tell an immigrant daughter story not about pain, or cultural conflict (whatever that means) but about quirkiness, joy and power! Finding my humorous middle grade writing voice was amazing, like finding a hidden part of myself. (As my own kids will attest, I’m kind of a twelve year old at heart!)

So I do imagine more middle grade fantasy in my future, maybe some middle grade realistic fiction as well. I have a few ideas for YA novels too, one historical and one realistic fiction. There’s a family story of some great aunts who were involved in the Indian revolution from the British I’ve been longing to tell. But no matter what I write, it will probably have a bit of humor. I do love a good laugh! Joy and laughter can be a form of resistance!

4.          Besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

Reading (of course), watching movies and going to the theater with my kids, travelling with family, gardening, cooking!

5.          If you could do anything for a living besides writing and the medical field, what would it be and why?

Children’s literature is already a third career (after being a pediatrician, and then slowly transitioning away from seeing patients and into teaching at the college level)! But I think, if I was to do something besides being a doctor, teacher, or writer, honestly, I’d be a librarian! All of my career twists and turns have ultimately been about storytelling and story receiving. And I still get that fluttery “what should I read first?” feeling when I enter a library. I love talking about books, recommending books, handling books! (Although, confession time: as a teen, I was a library volunteer, but I spent a lot of time hiding in the stacks, reading, when I should have been re-shelving! Maybe that’s why I didn’t go to library school, I knew I’d have a hard time staying away from all that reading temptation!)


6.          What is the last middle grade or YA book you read?

I’m in the middle of reading several right now, but my last YA read was actually a listen. I recently finished the audio book of The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein (it’s a prequel of sorts to her amazing Code Name Verity). It’s a lovely, evocative family mystery set in Scotland, and the accents were scrumptious to listen to! Middle grade, I just finished reading Celia C. Pérez’ First Rule of Punk which I thought was just awesome! Amazing voice, spunky heroine, warm family context, and beautiful, fun zines throughout the text!

7.          This is the first time you’ve been on a book tour. What is the funniest thing that’s happened to you? What is the BEST thing that has happened on tour?

While I obviously love interacting with teachers, librarians, booksellers and fellow authors on tour, for me, the most memorable thing about being on book tour is undoubtedly interacting with kids in schools. They’re the ones who ask the hardest/funniest questions too. One young woman recently got up, after I’d talked all about how I wrote The Serpent’s Secret for my kids and how they helped me edit it, and asked, “If your kids helped you so much with the book, why didn’t you dedicate it to them?” I almost fell over. She wasn’t trying to give me a hard time, she was just being honestly curious! (In case folks are wondering, I dedicated Book 1 to immigrant parents, and my own parents – but Book 2 is dedicated to diasporic kids and my own kids!) I asked another young woman, a sixth grader, the other day what kind of books she likes reading. She looked at me seriously and said, “Anything with an empowered girl protagonist. There’s not enough of that out there, and I feel strongly about that.” I couldn’t do anything but give her a first bump of agreement!

8.          What books would you recommend that EVERY child/teen read before they become an adult?

I’m not sure if there’s any one set of books – I’d say it’s important for children and teens to read, read widely, and read both what they’re naturally drawn to and outside of their comfort zones. I think most importantly all kids should be able to read books that are mirrors – in other words, books that somehow reflect their experiences – and books that are windows – in other words, books that allow them to gain an understanding and empathy for experiences and people unlike them. (For more on mirrors and windows, see Dr. Rudine Sims Bishops’ groundbreaking writing on this!)

9.          What children’s or YA book should every ADULT read and why?

Again, I’m not sure if there’s any one or more books I’d recommend, but I think that adults should read books for young people. For pleasure, for sharing with the young people in their lives, and for a reminder of what it means to be young and in relation with stories. I think that reading books for young people can help adults  awaken their wonder, joy and curiosity again. I think some of the most revolutionary and socially transformative thinking is happening in children’s literature. Particularly now that we slowly (slowly!) see so many more authors from marginalized identities representing their own communities’ stories. As the great Madeline L’Engle said, “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." And that applies to reading too.


10.       What traits do you share with Kiranmala? What traits of hers would you love to have as your own?

When I was young, I sometimes said things before thinking, and later regretted my words, like Kiranmala. I also definitely underestimated my parents’ general awesomeness – I knew they loved me, but like Kiranmala, sometimes wished they could be just like everyone else. It’s a common immigrant kid experience, and it was really important for me to recognize that it was our family’s uniqueness that was our strength, and that it was only by embracing all of who I was that I could find my true self. So even though it’s a story full of flying horses, drooly rakkshosh demons and evil snake kings, Kiranmala’s story really is my own immigrant daughter story, about returning to the land of my ancestors, the stories of my family, to find my own superpowers! Except I’m not sure if, confronted by a giant demon breaking through my kitchen, I could be as brave as Kiranmala is!

11.       What smells or scents bring back your childhood?

Lilac – my mom had a tree right outside our kitchen window when I was growing up in Ohio. Jasmine – the smell always reminds me of my childhood visits to India. And of course the smell of Indian cooking!

12.       What food speaks to your SOUL?

Bengali food – of course!

13.       What is your greatest vacation of all time?

When my kids were younger, I would have said by a beach or a pool so that they can have fun and I can sit by them reading and writing! I still enjoy vacations like that, but I equally enjoy travelling the world with my kids and husband. As a big book and theater nerd, the best vacations are ones that involve some kind of visit to a writer’s home, or to see a great play! (My kids are both in a children’s Shakespeare theater company near our home, so anytime I can see good Shakespeare, I’m happy!)

14.       If you had one wish for both of your children, what would it be?

Oh, just for them to make the world a better and more just place for all. Not too big of a task, no pressure! J

15.   If you have a favorite charity or would like to support one, what is it and why?

I support a lot of conservation, gender justice and social justice organizations. I regularly support Amnesty International, Doctors for Human Rights, and The Southern Poverty Law Center, who all do important work against injustice and hate. There’s too much of that in the world, and if being a children’s author has taught me anything, it’s that we all must keep doing the work of revolutionary love. 

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Blog Tour: REWIND

Rewind Blog Tour Stops

Win a FREE copy of REWIND. Post a comment here on my blog. Include first name, city, state and email. I do not share your emails anywhere. One winner will be picked on April 23 at noon MST. Please check your email on that date. The winner has 24 hours to respond to my email. The book will ship from the publisher. Thank you and be sure and read my review and interview with the author below.

 REWIND
by Carolyn O'Doherty
Boyds Mills Press 
2018
256  pages 
ISBN: 9781629798141

Thrilling edge of your seat action, killer high stakes, a series of events that lead the main character into desperation, Rewind is one YA debut you cannot afford to miss! Sixteen year old Alex is a spinner and works with the Portland police department using her unique ability to stop and rewind time as a tool to solve crimes. The police, with her help, are able to solve cases that come up, including murder cases. When Alex stops time, she can rewind and watch events in a "rewind." She sees people doing everything backwards: walking backwards, driving backwards, just as if you were to rewind a video or VDR program. When Alex gets to the point in time that the crime occurs, she and her police partner, Mr. Ross, can see events happen and see the criminal commit the crime. When Alex agrees to partner with Ross to stop a dangerous criminal she has no idea what she is getting into and worse, who to trust.

Alex lives in a group setting called the Center with others who share her ability. Spinners are kept there since birth as the populace fears them and their powers. Many people hate or distrust them. Alex is allowed "outside" only on a tether (a leash) so that normal people can control her. All the kids are on meds. They think what they are taking is helping them, but as Alex begins a new secret treatment, she realizes the drugs are killing them. The government wants them to die in their teens. Alex puts her trust in best friend KJ and they escape the center and go on the run.

Readers will be unable to put this one down. A page-turner with high stakes and a kick-butt female protagonist is always a win. Add fighting crime and a HUGE double cross, and you have magic in those pages! /Time travel is always a win, but with the police and crime solving aspect, this is a unique twist. Reluctant readers will find themselves LOVING this one. 

HIGHLY, highly recommended for all YA readers. Grades 7 and up.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received the ARC from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.


                                               Meet Carolyn--My Interview with Carolyn 


Q:  In REWIND, Alex is the main character and hero. In Books 2 and 3, will other spinners become more important, or will Alex continue as the main?

Alex remains the point of view character in all three books, though Jack and Shannon both become more prominent characters in book two.

Q: Rewind is book one in a planned trilogy, where are you as a writer right now? Are you finished with all three and editing? Are you currently still writing? When can readers expect publication of next two books?

Book 2 is almost finished (at least I hope so!). I have one more round of changes to work through but the book is complete so the edits are around tightening the pacing rather than working through the plot. Book 2 is scheduled to come out in the spring of 2019. Book 3 right now only exists as a really terrible early draft. I sketched out what I wanted to have happen in 3 before I finished book 2 to make sure that I wasn’t going to write myself into a corner but the manuscript is otherwise a complete mess. I don’t have a contract yet for book 3, but I hope we’ll have it out a year after book 2 (spring of 2020).

Q: The Portland area seems to be a hotbed of YA writers right now. Does living in the area help a YA writer? If so, why?

I don’t know if living in Portland helps YA writers specifically, but it’s a great place to live for a writer in general. There are wonderful resources here and lots of supportive peers to lean on. I’ve been part of a number of different writing groups, both formal and informal, and all of them have added to my sense of being part of a community. I find writing groups, and individual writing friends, so important, both because it’s hard to critique your own work and because most of my writing time is spent all by myself. It’s endlessly reassuring to have someone to talk to about the difficulties of good plotting, finding inspiration, uncooperative characters, and the challenges of the publishing industry.

Q: How many edits or changes did your manuscript go through from querying and landing your agent to editor? How many edits did it go through at editor stage?

Short answer: a lot. I got my agent for REWIND in the spring of 2014. The feedback I received from her took me six months to work through – I changed the entire book from past tense to present and rewrote a major section in the middle, which then meant more changes in the end to make it consistent. When Boyds Mills Press picked it up they asked for additional changes. Those were less dramatic, but they still took time. After that, we had maybe a half dozen rounds of back and forth with increasingly pickier changes. Boyds Mills’ editors are awesome – they caught all kinds of problems and inconsistencies from a character holding something one moment and then reaching that same hand out to do something else, to a word I overused, similes that didn’t work, and misplaced commas. The final rounds of edits were crazy specific – like, could I remove a few letters from a particular line so that the sentence didn’t look squished on the page? I did not expect that level of editing at all!

Q:When would freezing time be a blessing? A curse?

I think for the person who had the skills it would generally be a blessing, assuming one did not live in the society Alex does, and one was able to use the skill at will. You could do a lot of good in the world: stopping people from dying in a car crash, for example, or, as Alex does in the first chapter of REWIND, defusing a bomb. For us non-spinners, though, the ability to stop time is pretty troubling. A spinner with bad intentions is almost impossible to protect against. It’s one of the tensions I’m exploring more as the series progresses.

Q: Besides YA time travel, is there another genre you are considering writing? For example: MG or YA fantasy?

The very first novel I wrote, the one that lives in the proverbial drawer, was an epic fantasy aimed at adult readers. It’s unlikely to ever see the light of day, though I do toy with the idea of resurrecting it sometimes. Since then I’ve only written YA with some sort of fantastical element. One started out as an adult book, but it ended up turning into YA, so I think this is where I’m staying. I like YA because the stories can be more complex than MG without having to add the additional angst adult novels tend to have (at least the ones I like to read). YA can be really playful and I enjoy living in that place while I write.

Q: What is the last YA book you've read besides your own?

A friend recently gave me the first of the Raven Cycle books by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys) and I have to admit to being a bit obsessed. I just finished the third one and can’t wait to start the fourth!

Q: What books would you recommend to every YA reader?

Books are so personal. I don’t think there are any must-read books that work for everyone. People should read whichever stories suck them into a fictional world so deeply they never want to leave. One of my older son’s favorite writers when he was a teen was Walter Dean Myers, who writes gritty, realistic novels about inner city boys and young soldiers. My other son is currently immersed in Game of Thrones. A few books I have been sucked into lately (besides the aforementioned Raven Cycle) are: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, Feed by M.T. Anderson, and Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. Everyone in my family adores all seven Harry Potter books. Read a lot, read widely, and discover what you love.

Q: Besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

This doesn’t really count as a hobby, but I have a non-writing job as an affordable housing developer that fills a lot of my time. My position there means building a lot of spreadsheets and I find using such a different part of my brain is a nice balance to the creative/writing side of my life. Outside of work I like reading, cooking, snowboarding, and visiting with friends. My youngest is off to college soon so my husband and I are dreaming up a lot of trips we want to take as empty nesters.

Q: What author (even outside of YA) do you admire most and why?

This is a hard one, there are so many authors I admire for so many different reasons. Of the classics, I’m a big Jane Austen fan because of her precision and beautiful prose (OK, and because I’m a hopeless Anglophile). Toni Morrison’s work always blow me away, especially her novel Beloved, which is one of my all-time favorites. Her writing is poetic and gorgeous and the story is heartbreaking. I also really admire J.K. Rowling’s ability to create such a detailed and immersive world. I’m sure I could go on – there are so many wonderful writers out there.

Q: If you could do anything besides writing for a living, what would it be?

Hah! As I in no way make my living from writing, I’d say developing affordable housing. That said, I recently visited a gallery of an artist (Chris Roberts-Antieau) who makes really gorgeous textile art. I’d love to be able to create something like that!

Q: Every writer has things that appear in every work. For example mine are: a bookstore or library, a dog, food, magic and snappy dialog. What things appear in all your works?

So far the common denominator seems to be Portland. That and weird, science fiction-y elements because I love playing with what-ifs. The book I’m working on now has a character who wakes up looking a different age every morning. I’ve also sketched out a story that involves body swapping – my whole family pitched in on the initial plotting for that one while we were out hiking one day!

Q: What food speaks to your SOUL?

Homemade macaroni and cheese? It’s not very exciting but it’s definitely my go-to comfort food and also the first non-dessert thing I learned how to cook. Sushi is one of my favorite flavors, though. And dark chocolate. I am also very fond of red wine (is that bad to admit in a YA blog?).

Q: What smells or scents bring back childhood memories for you?

The beach – warm tropical beaches, not those chilly coastal places. I lived in Hawaii from ages 7 to 14 and we used to go to the beach every Sunday. The smell of sea-salt and hot sand always take me back.

Q: What was your greatest vacation of all time and why?

When we first got married, my husband and I spent four months traveling around SE Asia. We spent time in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. We saw beautiful places, learned history I never would have absorbed in a classroom, and talked to so many interesting people. It’s easy to think of foreign countries as “different” or scary, but when you’re there you realize we’re all just everyday people living out our lives. Well, “everyday” in some ways, but with exotic-to-me food and scenery and things to explore. I wish everyone had the opportunity to travel because I think then we would live in a kinder and more peaceful world.


Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Adult Book Club Pick: Dreadful Young Ladies

Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories
by Kelly Barnhill
Algonquin
2018
304 pages
ISBN: 9781616207977

Author Kelly Barnhill has proven her talent as a children's writer with the blockbuster middle grades fantasy  The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Now she tackles short stories for adult readers, and she does so with nuanced finesse!

Adult fans of Barnhill's books will revel in this literary feast. The author has lost none of her magic, whimsy or fantastical situations and characters. Short story collections are rare, but this one is worth your time and investment.

Highly recommended for short story fans.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher.