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Archive for ya week

It’s a wrap…

By Jia · Comments (2)
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
YA Spring Break Week has come to an end. Thanks to all of our WONDERFUL guest bloggers, including Monica McKayhan, Shannon Greenland, Lucienne Diver, Diana Peterfreund and Rachel Caine. You all did an awesome job! Also, thanks to everyone who commented and participated in our contests. We had an absolute blast and we hope that you did too!
We still have a few unclaimed prizes. If you recognize your name from the following list, please email your physical address to contests @ knightagency.net (remove spaces in address):
Winner of 5 Books from Monica McKayhan’s INDIGO series: Anna
Winners of Signed VAMPED bookplates from Lucienne Diver: Nicola, Suzette and Isabel
Today’s winner of signed Rachel Caine book of their choice: tetewa
Winner of Shannon Greenland’s series: Sara
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Categories : diana peterfreund, lucienne diver, monica mckayhan, rachel caine, shannon greenland, ya spring break week, ya week

YA Spring Break Week: Guest Blogger Rachel Caine Says Divas Rock

By Jia · Comments (44)
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
UPDATE: The winner of a signed Rachel Caine book of the winner’s choice is tetewa. Please email your physical address to contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces in the email addy). Congrats!
I’m kind of jazzed to be tapped to write about The Diva (you should always spell it that way, with Capital Emphasis). I have two reasons … one is that I come from a musical background, and so I know that the term “diva” originally meant an extremely gifted star, usually operatic. It was related to “prima donna” — another term that just meant “First Lady” (of the opera). And of course, opera stars became known for their temper tantrums, but darn it, they were WORTH IT. They did it with STYLE.
That’s probably because opera has always been a tough gig — fragile egos need not apply. No matter how amazing the opera singer, opera audiences were merciless critics throughout history. Check it: one of the greatest divas of all time, Maria Callas, got pelted with bouquets of radishes by her non-adoring fans. And didn’t even flinch as she finished the show. That’s ATTITUDE.
Possibly the great legend of the diva stems from a pair of opera prima donnas — Faustina Bordoni and Francesa Cuzzoni — whose offstage rivalry heated up in 1727. A noted tabloid reporter of the time (yes, they had them then, too) published an account of the stage scandal with a screaming headline: “THE DEVIL TO PAY AT ST. JAMES: or, a full and true account of a most horrid and bloody battle between Madam Faustina and Madam Cuzzoni.” Apparently, there was dress-tearing, hair-pulling, curse-shrieking, and throwing of vegetables from the audience. Quite a show. And by the way, opera still is a rough sport … recently a singer got booed off the stage at La Scala in tears. Yup. It happens. It takes a major attitude to take the stage knowing that could await you.
So today’s Divas have a lot to live up to, obviously. They’re no longer required to have the talent … only the ‘tude. And they take self-confidence to insane levels. A true Diva thinks of no one but herself — or who can do something for her. There’s no ally she won’t betray, no minion she won’t throw under the bus to get ahead, no back in which she won’t find a home for her dagger. Divas typically have a posse, and a talent for causing a scene when you least want it.
In short, The Diva is seriously entertaining … if you’re watching from the sidelines (or the cheap seats). Facing off against her is no treat, especially since The Diva usually has a nasty temper and a long memory.
So how does The Diva help in a story? She’s a great villain. She’s also a great reluctant ally … having the meanest of the Mean Girls on your side can be an amazing advantage. (Just be sure never to turn your back on her. Or borrow her best shirt.)
So remember: Divas are fabulous. Divas are blindingly confident. Divas are WORTH IT.
Go on. Be a Diva … just for a day.
Here, have a tiara. :)

– Rachel Caine
Enter to win an autographed copy of one of Rachel’s MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES books! The winner will receive the book of their choice from the series. Leave your name in the comment section. The winner will be announced tomorrow morning.
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Categories : feast of fools, rachel caine, ya spring break week, ya week

YA Spring Break Week: Guest Blogger Diana Peterfreund

By Jia · Comments (51)
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
UPDATE: The winner of an ARC of TAP & GOWN is nightdweller20. Please email your physical address to contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces in the email addy). Congrats!
THE MYTH OF PRINCE CHARMING
I never liked Prince Charming.
You remember him. That generic, stock character, two-timing Prince that snagged both Snow White and Cinderella in the Disney movies? He didn’t have a name, he didn’t have his own lines, he didn’t even have complex animated eyes (how you can tell you’re a real character in a Disney movie: irises.)

Though in the traditional fairy tales, PC goes onto to land Sleeping Beauty, too, the brilliant team behind the Disney version saw fit to grace him with both a name (Phillip) and an identifiable personality (his first appearance on screen features him, as a freckled child, wrinkling up his nose at the wrinkly infant princess he’s betrothed to). They also gave the Princess a name (Aurora), and they both, thank God, skipped over Coraline-style black button eyes.

Is it any wonder that Briar Rose/Aurora and Phillip’s love story was the first one that I, even as a youth, actually bought? They were in love before the curse hits, and you could see why they were actually a good match – so outdoorsy, and musical. When Phillip fights the dragon and frees Aurora, you feel like the two of them actually deserve their happily ever after. They are a real couple, one whose romance rings true.
“Prince Charming,” on the other hand is not a character to fall in love with; he’s a prize to be won. Get your foot in that glass slipper, look pretty enough in that glass coffin, and Prince Charming’s all yours. Consciousness? Him knowing your name? Eh, not important.
Talk about shallow!
You can’t fall in love with perfect and bland, and that’s all Prince Charming has to offer. No wonder he only hits on chicks in comas, or girls for whom the alternative is working as slaves for evil stepmoms. Any other girl would tell him to take a hike. It’s all in the name.
Prince = I’m rich, baby. Wealth and power, that’s right. You know you want it.
Charming = Handsome? Why yes, I suppose I am. I certainly have all the palace wenches after me.
Yeah. What a prize. I’d lay good odds on the idea that Prince Charming is the kind of guy who turns into scary abusive husband when his Princess Charming doesn’t stay as submissive and obedient as she was when she was unconscious. No. Thank. You.
Prince Charming was the template for the hero in the old fashioned romance novels. You know the ones, where the guy totally ignored the girl for the entire book and then three pages from the end comes back and explains why he was in love with her all the time? Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of those, either. He didn’t get a personality of his own. Again, he was just a prize to be won. It’s a common flaw in many chick lit novels, as well. A chick lit novel is about the heroine’s journey – I get that – but far too often, we see gorgeous guy just fall out of the woodwork at the end and be madly in love with the heroine. For no reason. With no real personality of his own. And, most of all, with no insight into why these two should be together.
Hey, I’m cool with writing stories where the romance is not the main focus. I do that myself. I’m even cool with the ending of “now that you, heroine, have your personal issues sorted out, I will award you with a new job, a fab apartment, a closet filled with the shoes of your choice, and oh, look, a gorgeous guy.” Romance-as-reward works for me, but it has to also make sense. A shoe can be beautiful and simple and perfect. Real people seldom are.
If there is a romance in the book, it should have a reason for existing. I need to know that there is something these two people see in one another for me to root for them to end up together. I need to believe there’s a reason these two are in love before I can believe that they actually are. It doesn’t need to be grand. It doesn’t need to be epic. Sometimes people are in love for very quiet, prosaic reasons. Common experiences. Mutual concern for a child. Shared passion for bird-watching, foreign films, or finding the perfect crème brulee. Whatever it is.
Do you know who doesn’t have these things? Prince Charming. He has no personality of his own. You can’t love that. Not really. I prefer Prince Charming-But-Damaged, or Prince Not-Really-All-That-Charming-But-Has-a-Good-Heart. Or a Good Right Hook. Or Your Back In A Fight. Those are the kind of princes who really make for Happily Ever Afters.
Be one of the first fans to read TAP & GOWN (Delta, May 2009)! Enter to win a signed ARC (advanded reading copy) by leaving your name in the comment section. The winner will be announced tomorrow morning.
Also coming soon from Diana: RAMPANT (Harper Teen, August 2009): Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed at her eccentric mother’s stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend in the woods – thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to prom – Astrid learns that unicorns are real and dangerous, and she has a family legacy to uphold. Her mother packs her off to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries. However, at the cloisters, all is not what is seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to – perhaps most dangerously of all – her growing attraction to a handsome art student… and a relationship that could jeopardize everything.
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Categories : diana peterfreund, tap and gown, ya spring break week, ya week

YA Spring Break Week: Lucienne Diver Tackles America’s Sweetheart…Begrudgingly

By Jia · Comments (30)
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
UPDATE: The winners of signed VAMPED bookplates are: Nicola, Suzette, Celeste, Brindle and Isabel. Please send your physical addresses to contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces in the email addy).
When Jia gave me “America’s sweetheart” as a topic, I had to laugh. I suppose if I had to label myself, I’d be a closet goth. Not cool enough for the full title. Too cheerful for one; too geeky for another. Yes, I adore vampire fiction and have an affinity for skulls, hence my near miss with graduate school for forensic anthropology, but I tend to wear all that on the inside.
So, as you can imagine, the thought of America’s sweetheart makes my teeth hurt. Saccharine overload. The likelihood of cavities and dentists and all that rot. But here’s the thing…nothing is ever as it seems. Authors and screenwriters have gotten a lot of mileage out of the fact that nobody’s perfect (think the film American Beauty). Inside we’re all closet geeks or addicts or outsiders laden with fears we hide away from the outside world. Things that are either too precious to be exposed to ridicule or too certain to invite it. And the teen years are the worst, as kids often try to direct attention away from their own perceived weaknesses by pointing out those of others.

Like my character Gina from VAMPED. Okay, she doesn’t have any insecurities that she’s aware of. She’s coasting along fairly certain that she’s at the absolute top of the food chain. Until she wakes up dead. No reflection, no way to apply lipstick or fix her hair and make-up. Now that’s horror. And that’s why I had so much fun playing with her. In order for Gina to become a fully-realized person, I had to knock her off her pedestal. Take her from head of the fashion police to low girl on the vampire totem pole. That’s the true test of a person’s metal…whether they wither in adversity or put on their big girl panties and deal with it. Well, Gina is not the type to take her reversal of fortune lying down, especially once she discovers that not only is her geek-boy sire in danger of being stolen away by his vampire vixen progenitor, but her classmates are being turned to the dark side to serve as cannon fodder in some war not of their choosing. First of all, if anyone’s deserving of merry minions, it’s Gina. For another, well, she’s starting to develop some of those warm and fuzzy feelings she was always able to fend off when she lived and breathed.
So, I guess what I’m saying here is that the idea of America’s sweetheart and all that accompanies it (perfect beauty, manners, behavior…ack!) is just that, an idea, an ideal. The truth is that the beauty is in seeing what has to be done and doing it, in accepting yourself and others for who they are and in hosing the sugar-coating from our ideals and facing their realities. I think we’d all be so much happier in a world where people were prized for saying and doing what they feel is right rather than what they’re told is acceptable.
To me, that’s part of what’s so appealing about young adult fiction. It’s subversive. So much of the text and subtext is about a) being true to yourself and b) not buying into the preconceived rules and notions of authority. We’ll never change the world by accepting the status quo.
That’s my two cents.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. Five winners will be chosen to receive signed VAMPED bookplates from Lucienne! Leave your name in the comments to enter. The winners will be announced tomorrow morning in this post.

Visit Lucienne’s blog and website: www.LucienneDiver.com & http://varkat.livejournal.com/.

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Categories : lucienne diver, vamped, ya spring break week, ya week

YA Spring Break Week: Guest Blogger Shannon Greenland

By Jia · Comments (42)
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

NEW UPDATE: Sara has yet to claim her prize!! You have until April 30th to do so or another winner will be chosen. Give us a holler at Contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces before emailing) by the deadline, and we will pass your info along to Shannon! Thanks!

UPDATE: The winner of this contest is Sara! Thanks to everyone who participated :) .

How Great Are Sidekicks?

What’s a Batman without a Robin? Sherlock Holmes without Dr. Watson? Shrek without the Donkey? Harry Potter without Ron and Hermione?

Sidekicks play a very important role. They are the best companion for the hero and the person the hero talks to the most. Sidekicks can usually do something the lead character cannot, making them an asset to the lead and the story. They make the hero think through things and many times offer wonderful comic relief. They bring something out in the lead character that the reader would not necessarily see if it weren’t for the sidekick’s question, comment, or reaction. They help us like the hero, which is what we’re supposed to do as a reader.

If an author’s not careful, though, sidekicks can easily take over a story! In fact, many subsequent novels are spun off of reader enthusiasm over a supporting character.

I was thinking back to high school the other day and remembered this guy (we’ll call him X), who drove a corvette and was the ooh-la-la of the place. X had a trusty sidekick (we’ll call him Y). Y was everything X was not: shorter, chubbier, smarter. X was everything Y was not: athletic, tall, handsome. My friends used to kid that X was friends with Y only because it made him look good. Truth be told, they had a fantastic relationship. They were everything the other was not. And, in fact, just a few weeks ago I got a Facebook message with a picture of X and Y still together with their wives and children. Too funny!

Switching to me and THE SPECIALISTS. My lead character, GiGi, is the brain of the spy group. But she couldn’t function without her sidekicks, who are everything she is not. There’s Wirenut, the goofy electronics specialist. Beaker, the Goth chemist. Parrot, the shy linguist. Mystic, the touchy-feely clairvoyant. And Bruiser, the spunky martial artist.
I’m giving away one complete, autographed set of this series. Just comment on this blog and I’ll enter you to win. That’s it. Very easy! I’m going to draw a winner on Tuesday, April 7th and announce it here and at my site over at www.shannongreenland.com

Cheers!
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Categories : shannon greenland, the specialists, ya spring break week, ya week

YA Spring Break Week: Guest Blogger Monica McKayhan Weighs In On Bad Boys

By Jia · Comments (17)
Monday, March 30th, 2009

UPDATE: The winner of five books from Monica’s INDIGO series is Anna! Please email your physical address to contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces in the email addy).

He’s the rebel, or the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s bitter, volatile, a crushed idealist, but he’s also confident and mysterious, charismatic and street smart. He despises authority and doesn’t buckle under to anyone, which also makes him somewhat a bully. Girls are attracted to the bad boy because he represents everything that is exciting, intriguing and new. He’s everything she’s not. He’s nothing like her father and doesn’t possess anything that resembles her values. She knows that he won’t be accepted in her healthy circle, but she loves him nonetheless. And according to him, she’s the only one who loves him. “Without her,” he says, “no one else will care.” He’ll perish without her love. His mystery, confidence and seemingly unavailability in the beginning cause her to chase him, which proves that girls are also attracted to boys who ignore them.

Consider Stephanie Meyer’s Edward Cullen character in The Twilight Saga; a vampire who takes bad boy to a whole other level. When Edward first sees Bella in class, he stiffens up like he’s smelled a dead skunk and avoids her like the plague. She searches for him everyday and when he finally does come back, he alternates between being nice to her, and telling her she shouldn’t be friends with him. This back and forth drives Bella crazy, which is probably what Edward wants all along.

There’s nothing worse than a guy consistently having to resist the urge to kill you for lunch, but the fact remains that girls’ love for bad boys had withstood the test of time. In the not-so-terrifying ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, we see the bad boy as the protector when he and Becky Thatcher are lost in a cave. In the beginning, Tom Sawyer primarily has no moral code, his sense of ethics confined to feeling guilty over a terrible act he’s already done through selfishness or impulsiveness. He is, however, presented with a genuine moral dilemma when he witnesses a murder, and travels a path that causes him to do the right thing. In this story, the bad boy becomes the hero.

Bad boys exist in real life – not just in fiction, which is why YA writers have such an important job. We have an obligation to not only entertain our young readers, but to equip them with information that can help them make good decisions. If we’re creating characters that look and act like them, then those same characters must be able to identify what’s good and whole, as well those things that are potentially harmful. While we, as girls, love bad boys – we have to know when bad is reflective of a flaw in character – perhaps a lack of maturity, or when bad is just bad for no good reason at all.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. Leave your name in the comments and enter to win FIVE BOOKS from Monica McKayhan’s INDIGO series!! The winner will be announced tomorrow morning.


DEAL WITH IT (Kimani Tru, June 2009)

www.MonicaMckayhan.com

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Categories : monica mckayhan, ya spring break week, ya week

Coming Soon: YA Spring Break Week!

By Jia · Comments (0)
Friday, March 27th, 2009
If you love YA, then you’ll love what we have planned starting Monday, March 30th! It’s YA Spring Break Week on the TKA blog. Our lineup includes guest authors Monica McKayhan, Shannon Greenland, Lucienne Diver, Diana Peterfreund and Rachel Caine. They will each tackle one of the classic character types in YA literature. Think Prince Charming, the irrepressible Sidekick, the Diva, the Bad Boy, and of course, America’s Sweetheart. Looking back to my own high school days, there are a few more I could add in. How about yourself? What about the Bookworm (read: me). LOL. Glad those days are over, but I still love to read about them and reminisce.
Don’t forget to check back next week for these special guest blogs, which will feature plenty of fabulous prizes!
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Categories : diana peterfreund, lucienne diver, monica mckayhan, rachel caine, shannon greenland, ya week
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