First Review of Furious

Waiting on the first review of a new book always gives me a knot in my stomach. 
So, finally, here's an excerpt:
 "For readers moving beyond Percy Jackson into the more complex realm of teen angst, Furious is an enthralling and chilling tale that uses Greek mythology to create a timely fable." 
Thanks Kirkus Reviews!

Furious is showcased as part of a 100+ book give-away at Live to Read. Lots of great books. Check it out.

Fury Wings

In anticipation of the publication of my new book, Furious, my friend Carol knitted for me this gorgeous cape of Fury wings. (Modeled by my bedroom floor lamp). Love having a friend who reads and knits.

Road Sketches by 1000 Artists

My pal Jon Bailiff is taking the train from Calif. to DC for the Obama inauguration as part of the  Thousand Artists project - a public art-making event. He is sketching non-stop to document the journey. I am so jealous of this! These are some of my favorite pictures so far.

The Plot

And here's the description from the jacket cover:

We were only three angry high school girls, to begin with. Alix, the hot-tempered surfer chick; Stephanie, the tree-hugging activist; and me, Meg, the quiet foster kid, the one who never quite fit in. We hardly knew each other, but each of us nurtured a burning anger: at the jerks in our class, at our disappointing parents, at the whole flawed, unjust world.

We were only three angry girls, simmering uselessly in our ocean-side California town, until one day a mysterious, beautiful classmate named Ambrosia taught us what else we could be: Powerful. Deadly. Furious.

Yes, that’s us. The three Greek Furies, come to life, ready to take our revenge on everyone who deserves it. And who doesn’t deserve it, really? We’re done with chances. We are angry. The Furies have come to town.

Look what's here! Galleys for Furious. If you are a blogger or reviewer and want an ARC, let me know and I'll ask my publicist to send one your way.

Yippee. My newest YA novel, Furious, has a pub date. April 16, 2013. And a cover.  It's always exciting -- and a little unnerving -- to see what someone else's vision of what I wrote. Love it?

Awesome Book Trailer

The publisher of the new UK edition of Cold Hands, Warm Heart has created a great new cover, plus a fantastic book trailer. It's so amazing to see a character come to life -- and death. What do you think?

Radio show about the Beat Within

Robert Pollie, the host of the 7th Avenue Project on public radio, produced a fantastic hour-long radio show about The Beat Within. He asks great questions -- and did some amazingly profound interviews with some of the incarcerated kids at Santa Cruz juvenile hall. Listen to Daniel, Sami, Ronnie, Ulysses and others talk about their lives "inside" and their relationship to the written word.

You can hear the program by clicking here.

Publicity for the Beat Within Fundraiser

I'm thrilled at all the great press we're getting for the literary Beat Within fundraiser. Donate some cash to this fantastic and important art and writing program for incarcerated kids and you get an autographed book as a thank-you gift.

Read the article in The Santa Cruz Sentinel.
And in Metro Santa Cruz.

All the details for donating? Click here.

Donating to the Beat Within

Thanks so much to Amy Reed for posting on her blog about the fundraiser for The Beat Within. (And for her very generous donation of a book). One of the fun benefits of organizing this fundraiser is being introduced to the work of so many writers. I enjoyed checking out the interviews on her blog.

Non-Fiction in November

Blogger Nina Amir has declared: It's "Write Non-Fiction in November"month, her once-a-year challenge to complete a work of non-fiction in 30 days. She's posting a month's worth of pertinent info to help you along your way to publishing success. I'm her guest blogger today, in my guise as editor of Bay Area Parent.

Click here to read my post.

Donate a Book; Buy a Book

Almost every Friday night for the past 10 years or so, I've been a volunteer with a writing program called The Beat Within. Each week, I join staff and other volunteers at the juvenile hall in my home town to hold writing workshops with kids, ages 14-18. The hand-written pieces from the workshops are then published into a weekly magazine, The Beat Within, which circulates through juvenile halls and prisons around the country. Each entry is published along with an adult response. It's an amazing program.

And now, I'm helping to raise funds to keep it going. We're asking authors to donate autographed copies of their books to give away as a thank-you gifts to donors. The drive is just getting started and already so many wonderful writers have stepped up, including from Newbery-award winner Paul Fleischman and Karen Joy Fowler, author of the bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club.

To read all the details about the fundraiser, click here.

We need your help if you are an author, or if you love books and kids!

For more info, contact me here or at Books4Beat@gmail.com.

And please, please feel free to pass along this message and post it on Facebook, your blog, etc.

Dear Diary -- With Jillian Cantor

I met Jillian Cantor when we were both on the same panel at the Tucson Book Festival. The joke was that, in order to be a YA author, you need thick dark hair, to be named Jill and to have grown up in Philadelphia.

Jillian is the author of the wonderful YA novels, THE SEPTEMBER SISTERS (Harperteen) and THE LIFE OF GLASS (Winter 2010/Harperteen). Her first novel for adults, THE TRANSFORMATION OF THINGS, will be released in Fall 2010 by Avon/HarperCollins.

I'm so glad that she didn't toss her high school journal.


Here's Jillian:

In my upcoming release, THE LIFE OF GLASS, my main character Melissa keeps a journal during her freshman year in high school. It is a continuation of one her father kept before he died, a journal filled with strange facts and unusual love stories, a journal Melissa adds to by writing in the love stories she knows and discovers throughout the year, just so they won’t be lost.

Like Melissa, I, too, kept a journal during my freshman year in high school. Near the beginning I wrote, I’m a Freshman! Can you believe it? This is going to be a year for believing in myself, setting my goals, and reaching for my dreams. However, what follows reads like a soap opera – the boys I liked (which changed almost weekly, I should add), the fights I had with my friends. I’m not sure why, but I even gave my journal a name -- “Capricious” or “Capri” for short. Seems fitting now, looking at how capricious and whimsical I actually was back then, but how I came up with that name, I can’t tell you. I began all the entries by writing “Dear Capri,” (because I guess Dear Diary must’ve felt too boring to me!). Oh, and in the back I have a list of names I like for my future children – at the top of the list is Capricious, which I note will be the name of my first born. (I can assure you, that is not actually his name, though!)

Here are some excerpts from some of the entries. All the names are totally changed because. . . well, because I’m actually Facebook friends with most of these guys now, and even all these years later I would be mortified if any of them read this and realized I was talking about them!

Thursday, November 12, 1992

Guess what? Last Friday A. asked me out, but when I said yes he said JUST KIDDING. How rude and immature! Well now I have spies trying to figure out who he likes. A lot of people know that I like him now, but I don’t even care. In fact now I’m even questioning how much I like him. I keep flirting with B. Just a reminder that “there are other fish.”

Wednesday, November 25, 1992

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile. . .as for A. I wish he would ask me out, so I could say NO! Yuck!! . . .B is so funny, he makes me laugh all the time. He’s just a really awesome person.

Sunday, February 17, 1993

Well, long time no see. B. is SO long gone. I thought that I liked C., but then on Friday we had a dance, and suddenly I found D. very attractive. . . Options for the Dinner Dance are still open. Who knows? Anything could happen between now and June 11.

Friday, March 19, 1993 (12:04 AM)

I really like D. I want to go to the Dinner Dance with him, but I’m scared to ask him. What if he says no? What if he says yes?

Then there is a whole saga involving the Dinner Dance, in which one guy (E.), who I only liked as a friend, asked me and I said yes. But then this other guy (F.) who I dated on and off in junior high confessed his love for me and asked me, so I backed out on my yes with E. and ended up going with F. instead. I still cringe just thinking about it now. The rest of the journal pretty much chronicles my relationship with F., which really wasn’t much more than a friendship. We never even kissed – a point I obsess over for pages and pages.

And then the journal ends on September 3, 1993, which was the first day of my sophomore year and also the day I met my first serious boyfriend (who is now my husband). And after that, I never kept a journal again. Although, part of me almost wishes I’d kept writing, because that’s something I’d love to read now, what I was thinking and feeling when I first started dating my husband, what I would’ve written about him. And then the other part of me is REALLY glad I didn’t!

Kids Who Write

Every time I talk to a group of students, I inevitably get asked the same question by an earnest and passionate tween or teen: "I'm a writer. Where can I get published?"

Here's a resource list for budding authors, in addition to recommending that you create your own blog or website.(That's what I do!)

For writers 13 and under, there's the wonderful Stone Soup, which is published in my town (Santa Cruz, CA), and distributed all over the country. It's been described as "The New Yorker for kids", and I agree. For details on how to publish and subscribe, go to stonesoup.com. At this website, you'll find more resources. Click on "links" and click on "Young writers in print." Voila.

A wonderful salesperson at Anderson's Books in Naperville, Ill. suggested kidpub.com and its teen counterpart at teen-author.com.

A friend pointed me to teenlink.com.

Another: Kids who are immigrants or whose families are immigrants might enjoy entering Mitali Perkins' Fire Escape contests.

Now it's your turn. Have your found anything else either print or online?

Proust Questionnaire

Each week, Julie Halpern features an author on her Blog of Wonder: Proust Questionnaire. Today's guest? Me. Lots of fun to answer the questions. Check it out here.

Couldn't resist posting the picture of Proust's coffin.

School Visits in Naperville

I had a blast visiting today with students at Crone and Gregory Middle Schools in Naperville, Ill. I loved all the thoughtful questions, including: "So, do you think one day in the future in an advanced civilization, doctors will no longer do transplants, but will use stem cells to regenerate nerves and create viable organs?" Um, er, maybe?

I so love the passion and energy that school librarians put into welcoming visiting authors. Check out these two fabulous book displays that greeted me as I walked in the door. Thanks Karen and Nancy.

Anderson's YA Literature Conference

Just got to Chicago for 3 days of book promotion, school visits and speaking at Anderson's YA conference in Naperville on Saturday. Looking forward to being on panels and hearing Judy Blundell, Gennifer Choldenko, among others. Come if you're in the Chicago area.
Here's the link with the details.

Dear Diary --With Janette Rallison

About a month ago, I was helping my mom clean out my childhood home and came upon my middle-school diaries. Wow, what a drama queen I was.
Hmmm. Drama Queen 7th Grader=Children's Book Writer.

I invited other writers to share their earliest and most personal writing. The invitation stands! Let me know if you want to participate.



First up: Janette Rallison, author of many wonderful books, including Fame, Glory, and Other Things on My To Do List (IRA Young Adults' Choices List 2007); It's a Mall World After All (IRA Young Adults' Choices List 2008) and How to Take the Ex out of Ex Boyfriend (IRA Young Adults' Choices List 2009)

Here's Janette!

I've written in journals since I was thirteen. You'd think that at some point I would have gone back and reread through these tomes, but beyond a few times that I’ve flipped through some of the later ones to reminisce about an event, nope, I haven't cracked any of them open.

I realize now, that I should have, if only for the entertainment value. Wow, I was silly at thirteen. For example, my sister got married that year so this event got a lot of page time in my journal. I understand my writing about my worries--they were mostly because my parents thought she was too young to get married. (She was the oldest so I hadn't realized at that point that my parents thought 32 was the respectable age to marry.)—but I described every detail of the day including the wedding luncheon and the reception. I wrote about the red punch, (it was so good I breathed it in) how many forks were used, (three, and they were silver) how many pictures were taken of the bride and groom (at least 250) and I even drew diagrams of where we stood in the reception line, what the cake looked like, and the poles that marked off the dancing area.

I have no idea why I felt the need to record all these details. Did I think someday we were going to reenact the event? Was I writing it down to make sure my reception was just as fancy? Did I think archeologists would one day unearth my journal and need it to understand wedding rituals of the 20th century? I have no idea. It was the only bit of information I didn't write down.

I did find some of my other observations on marriage interesting. I wrote:

I wouldn't mind being married. Sometimes I just want to get away from it all, from my parents, from all the things I do around here that I wish I didn’t have to do.
(Obviously I had getting married confused with taking a vacation to Disneyland. Hello, when you get married you have to do all that stuff that you wish you didn’t have to do plus some. I guess I thought elves came to pay the bills and stock the fridge.)

I wish I could get away from school and all its popularity groups and the struggle for boys and all the homework. (Okay, granted, I had a point about that. I don’t miss junior high.)

My sister looked so happy, so peaceful. (Of course she did—she no longer had to spend all of her time planning reception details.)

Then I went on to talk about my cousin, Jill’s wedding reception—luckily without the details about every food on the table or what color the napkins were.

Jill looked absolutely radiant! It was then I really decided that I was really going to look forward to my wedding. I even started a wedding fund which I now have a little over 10 dollars in. (I have no idea what happened to that fund. I probably spent it on chocolate in later years when I grew more cynical about men.)

I wonder what it would be like to be with a man, have his children, and live together for the rest of our lives. It’s a big step getting married. I hope I find the right guy. (I did, and it’s wonderful—even if I didn’t get ribbons on the poles to mark off the dancing area for the reception. Come to think of it, I didn’t get a band or a dancing area. I think I should show my journal to my parents. They owe me some ribbons and a band.)

By the way, at Jill’s reception I caught the wedding bouquet and then afterwards one of the waiters who worked there asked me to marry him. He was just kidding. I said, “Yes!” That was fun! (No wonder my parents worried their children getting married too young.)


Janette Rallison


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Interview with Betsy Franco

My interview with Betsy Franco, the wonderful children's book author, was just published in Stanford Magazine. Betsy has 6! new books scheduled to be published this year, including her first YA novel. The artwork is by one of her sons -- and yep, another son is heartthrob James Franco. Here's the link to the article.