I do so love a story with some good frocks. I know that may surprise some of you, as there were approximately zero frocks in all of the Secret Society Girl stories, and only one good frock in Rampant and Ascendant. But I positively adore frocks.

There is a frock in For Darkness Shows the Stars, which is funny, because of all my heroines, that one has the least opportunity to frock it up. And yet, she does, since that’s how much I love me some frocks, people.

What are your favorite frockalicious stories, and what are your favorite frocks in those stories?

A recent frockalicious story that I loved was Unlocked by Courtney Milan. I shall forgive her for naming the villain in her story Diana, because Courtney gives very good frock. There’s even a frock on the cover, and because this book was self-published, I know Courtney DID choose that frock.

And if you read the book, you’ll learn why.

My very favorite frock in a book is, of course, the Imperialis Moth frock that Philip Ammon designs for Edith Carr in A Girl of the Limberlost. Philip has spent hte summer studying moths with Elnora Comstock, and has decided that they are the “embodiement of June” and so he convinces his fiancee to use them as an inspiration for their June engagement party.

Here is a description of that marvelous frock:

For she stood tall, lithe, of grace inborn, her dark waving hair piled high and crossed by gold bands studded with amethyst and at one side an enameled lavender orchid rimmed with diamonds, which flashed and sparkled. The soft yellow robe of lightest-weight velvet fitted her form perfectly, while from each shoulder fell a great velvet wing lined with lavender, and flecked with embroidery of that color in imitation of the moth. Around her throat was a wonderful necklace and on her arms were bracelets of gold set with amethyst and rimmed with diamonds. Philip had said that her gloves, fan, and slippers must be lavender, because the feet of the moth were that color. These accessories had been made to order and embroidered with gold… in her heart she thought of herself as “Imperialis Regalis,” as the Yellow Empress.

Elnora has some interesting frocks in this book, too, but no frock has ever impressed upon me the way Edith’s has — and in the scene quoted above, it’s about to have a VERY big impression on all the characters involved.

(And of course my favorite frock COVERS are on the Luxe novels, by Anna Godbersen. The frocks inside are good too, but those covers make me weep with frocky joy.)

So tell me of the frocks you love, and the stories those frocks come with.

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For years, I re-read The Anne of Green Gables series (up thru Anne’s House of Dreams), A Girl of the Limberlost, and the Chronicles of Narnia (except for the Last Battle) every year. Every. Year. I have also read A Little Princess multiple times, as well too many books about Greek myths, romance novels, horror novels and other children’s books too many times to count.

Recently, I haven’t been much for rereading, because I’ve become aware of how many books there are out there to read (Out there? No, try my bookshelf!) But I have read Laini Taylor’s Lips Touch 3 Times multiple times, just to savor the beautiful language. Also, Karen Katz’s Where’s Baby’s Belly Button? Over and over and over. Q starts laughing the second I pick it up. It’s definitely her favorite book (though I keep trying to get her into Sandra Boynton, like any good Yalie).

So, this Friday: what do you re-read and why?

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So I’ve owned an e-reader (a Kindle) for a year now. To be honest, I haven’t used it much, but I contribute that to the fact that, last August, I got a smartphone (a DroidX) and promptly downloaded the Kindle app. Now I do all my kindling (Kindle-ing?) on my DroidX, who is named HALey.

The Kindle was great because I could read my critique partner’s manuscripts on it, which was a lot more convenient than either reading them on my computer or printing them out. The Kindle phone app does not have this feature. I can only read things I’ve downloaded from the Kindle store on it. HOWEVER, I cannot read on my Kindle or from a paper book in a darkened nursery while holding a baby in my arms at 2 am feedings, and that’s where I’ve been doing most of my reading for the past 9 months, so Kindle app on my phone totally wins.(Yes, I know there are backlit e-readers out there.)

And it’s not like I’ve been doing a ton of reading, either. I’ve read a bunch of baby books (baby care, baby sleep, baby brain development, baby eating, baby scheduling — half on an e-reading device, and half on paper) and a few parenting-adjacent non-fiction books (I loved The Panic Virus, by Seth Mnookin, and Unstrange Minds by Roy Richard Grinker, which I bought after meeting both authors at the Annapolis Book Festival). And I’ve read or started reading maybe half a dozen novels, all on my phone app.

That last part is important. Because of the snippety nature my reading time has taken recently, I’ve been more keen on reading non-fiction rather than fiction. You don’t have to worry about wrecking the mood when you read your non-fiction book in one page snippets. If you come back to the story after a week of not reading or at 2 am when your brain is mush, it’s much easier to follow two pages of non-fiction than it is to remember all the intricacies of a fiction plot.

When I pick up a novel after being away from it, I like to flip back a few pages to refresh my memory — a sort of internal, “Last time, in this novel…” But the kindle app on my phone makes that a major hassle to do, since it oh-so-conveniently saves my last place for me. And though flipping back a few pages to reacquaint myself isn’t a major hassle, any other flipping I might need to do to remind me of something that happened before IS. It’s a major hassle to me because none of the “markers” I may remember from whenever I learned this piece of book information is there to help me find it.

For example, say I’m reading on Tuesday night and I come across a passage that mentions that the main character’s aunt was a famous opera singer. Then, on Friday, I am reading and I read that the main character’s love interest has a colelction of opera music. I want to see if the aunt is in that collection, but I can’t remember the name.

In a paper books, I might have remembered that the information was at the top of the left hand page, or that it was about 1/4 of the way into the book (by thickness of the book in my hands). I can easily flip back to the general area and scan the tops of the left hand pages to try to pick up on that info.

However, in an ebook, all I can know is that it’s at the top or bottom of the screen, and it might not even be in the same spot anymore because of the way e-readers render their text. So instead I have to remember the scene it’s in and scan the pages until I find that particular scene, which is MUCH harder to do than with a paper book because you have to turn pages one at a time. Yes, e-readers have a “go to section x” function, but if you don’t know what section you were reading (and I don’t know about you, but I don’t look up how far I am every page) then that won’t help.

I’m not sure if this is an idiosyncrasy due to the way that I, as an individual, read things or what. When I was in high school, I wold often remember information for quizzes based on where the information appeared in our textbooks. In fact, I once got in trouble in biology class because my answers on a quiz were verbatim what it said in the textbook (the question was something like “describe mitosis”). So it’s possible that this only bothers me because I’m a weirdo who remembers information based on where it appears on the page.

(In passing, this is why it has always worked for me when editing my own work to change the font/spacing on my manuscript because it means I can trick myself into looking at stuff with “new eyes” and ALSO why I’m more likely to (unfortunately) catch errors in proof stage than in copyedits.

But that’s the big annoyance I’ve found regarding reading novels on e-readers. Right now, I have 29 novels loaded on my Kindle. I’ve read 3 of them completely: The Secret Garden, Beautiful Creatures, and Anna and the French Kiss. Two of these, it should be noted, were BQ (Before Queenie). And only two others were downloaded BQ. Which means I buy and download a LOT of novels I haven’t read. Now, granted, a few of them I’m not ever going to read, because I’ve read enough of them to know they’re DNF for me.

I’ve also bought several novels in paper since Q, and I haven’t read any of those, because they are never at hand when I have a few spare moments to read, unlike my Kindle books. Though I did break my streak a few days ago with an ARC of Stephanie Perkins’s Lola and the Boy Next Door that Jessica Spotswood was kind enough to lend me. (It was great, and very fitting that the first paper book I read After Queenie was the companion novel to the first novel I read AQ.) Perhaps this signifies a whole new world of paper book reading. I hope so, since i have a bunch that I’m dying to read, including Erica Ridley’s latest, Too Sinful to Deny, an ARC of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and Jo Treggiari’s Ashes, Ashes. Maybe now that Q is pretty regularly sleeping through the night (she gets a pass tonight, poor little teething thing) I can go back to my bedtime reading habit.

But, to be honest, I’m guessing I’ll also go back to paper. I’m not being a Luddite (I don’t think I’ll EVER be able to type that word without giggling again, and, next summer, you’ll all know why) but I do prefer paper, and after almost nine months of being forced to read only on e-format, I think I’ve given it a pretty fair shot.

However, since there are now a whole bunch of books that are ONLY available as ebooks, I’m glad I have a viable option. Before I had my phone (and Kindle), I could only read ebooks as PDFs on my computer, which meant if a book was only E, I never got around to reading it.Now I know I would.

How do you feel about ebooks? Do you have a dedicated e reader or a phone app that you use?

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Okay, unscientific and super-fast survey time, because now I’m curious:

If you’re in high school now, well, no extra-special additional question, but I’ll be doubly curious to hear your answer. (And maybe if there’s something unanimously loved, I’ll risk taking another look.)

Personally, I loved most of the books I read in high school. I had AMAZING high school English teachers (Mrs. Sayers and Ms. McDuffie) who I credit quite a bit toward teaching me how to write and cultivating in me a love of literature. Because I had nothing against being “assigned” books and they taught literature in such a way that I could learn how to analyze it without losing how to appreciate it (with one glaring exception), I really feel that the books I hated in high school would be books I’d hate now, so I havent actually tried any re-reading.

Loved:

• A Separate Peace
• The Chosen
• Pride & Prejudice
• The Crucible
• all the Shakespeare we read
• The Odyssey
• As I Lay Dying
• Kaffir Boy
• The Picture of Dorian Grey
• The Magus

Hated:

• The Red Pony
• The Grapes of Wrath
• All the Pretty Horses
• Wuthering Heights

At the time, I hated Lord of the Flies. It was the first book we read in high school, and therefore, it was dissected and offered up on the altar of “now we’re going to teach the students how to analyze literature.” I will never forget how one day, we had to answer questions about what the color of the poop the boys were pooping symbolized. I really don’t know why this book was so utterly destroyed, because, as I said before, this teacher was fantastic. Perhaps it was just a classroom conversation that devolved by students who were really resistant to the idea of talking about symbolism or literary analysis. I can’t remember now. But I do remember it wasn’t fun anymore. Things got better after that. (Though I do remember, sophomore year, everyone in my class being so confused by what was going on in The Sun Also Rises only to be told by the students who had a different, less G-rated  teacher what the main character’s big conflict was.)

Over at Robin’s blog, the votes are coming in fast and furious for A Separate Peace. Interesting.

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There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere recently about the general love of bad boys. I’ve seen a few folks saying that nice guys can work too (and a few more actually claiming “bad boy” status on characters I would certainly categorize as “nice guys”) but it’s pretty much nothing compared to the wave of bad boys taking over books.

My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?

Bad boys never did it for me. I never had a thing for Heathcliff (abusive, horrible puppy-killer!) or Mr. Rochester. I liked Gilbert Blythe and the fine, upstanding, stick-in-the-mud (if jerky) Mr. Darcy. (Actually, I *really* liked Captain Wentworth, who I suppose had the technical bad boy edge of being a privateer.) I thought Angel was a sociopath, and though I liked Spike as a character, I was never attracted to him and found his relationship with Buffy to be utterly laughable (as opposed to his relationship with Drusilla, which I actually found quite effective and moving). Me, I liked Riley — til they ruined him, that is.

(It is important to note that I do not think that angst=bad boy. Edmund Pevensie, upon whom I have a crush I’ve actually been paid to write about in detail, is angsty — but not a bad boy. He had one little lapse in judgment, and proceeds to spend the rest of the books atoning for it. A lot of bad boys are, however, angsty, which is usually our entry into sympathizing with them.)

So the only bad boy I ever fell for was Logan Echolls of Veronica Mars. And I fell hard. Perhaps it helped that Logan was still a child, and it was possible for him to rise above his abusive father and horrific home life that was making him into a psychotic jackass (See above re: angst and sympathy). I watched the end of the first season of VM with my heart in my throat worried/terrified that Logan had murdered his ex-girlfriend Lilly in a fit of jealous rage. And through it all, I loved him. My one bad-boy crush.

Perhaps my love for Logan helped when I found myself crafting my own bad-boy love interest — or what one reviewer (positively, if you can believe it) called “the asshole love interest.” It certainly hadn’t been my intention to write that guy, and it was really challenging too, to make it believable — to me — that a reasonable woman would take that kind of risk with her heart or with her safety. It took the better part of a book to set up a situation where I could even get her to a point where she’d initiate it, and another book entirely to get the relationship off the ground. It had to be believable for me.

And it worked, if the reader responses are anything to go by. People love Poe. I sometimes wonder how much they love him, and how much they love the trope of the bad boy. I worked hard on him, but most folks were on board right from the start. There’s something about bad boys that gives them that capital. Ironically, though bad boys have a population of readers ready to love them from the word go, good boys have to work five times as hard.

Here are the struggles they face:

• If they are sweet and considerate, they are perceived as weak.
• If they are steadfast, loyal, and sure of their feelings for the girl, they are perceived as desperate, lying, or too good to be true.
• If they are fine upstanding citizens, they are perceived as bland and goody-two-shoes.

Even Persnickety Snark, in her attempt at a “defense” of good boys calls them out on these things: “Too often nice comes across as boring.”

And to those naysayers, I present Mr. Lloyd Dobler:

Let’s face it, we all want John Cusack standing outside our house with a boombox.

And the whole point of Say Anything, really, is that Lloyd embodies everything that a bad boy is not. He’s sweet, and considerate, and unassuming, and steadfast, and stand-up, and absolutely, unequivocally in love with a girl that everyone thinks outclasses him.

MIKE: I wanted to ask you: how’d you get Diane Court to go out with you?
LLOYD: I called her up.
MIKE: Yeah, but how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you?
LLOYD: I’m Lloyd Dobler.
MIKE: This is great. This gives me hope. Thanks.

Lloyd isn’t boring or weak (he can manhandle drunks at a party pretty handily), but he’s also pretty accepting of the fact that his general lack of ambition and his vague idea of being a “professional kickboxer” doesn’t hold a candle to Diane’s future and destiny. So why do we like him so much?

A friend of mine told me it’s because Say Anything is, ultimately, Lloyd’s story. It’s not the story of a high-powered ambitious girl who accepts the gentle love and devotion of a nice guy like Lloyd Dobler. It’s about Lloyd, everyone’s favorite everyman, who through true love and devotion wins his prize of the beautiful girl. We’re with Lloyd. We really want him to get his heart’s desire, and when he does, we cheer.

But what if this was Diane’s story? Would we then perceive Say Anything as being about a very successful girl who takes pity on the class slacker, has a little summer romance, and when her life goes all topsy-turvy, settles, knowing this guy is willing to be her house-husband and general shoulder to lean on in England? Comforting, sure, but not exactly the stuff of high passion.

Heck, even Lloyd’s cadre of girlfriends (a delicate balancing act, from a writer’s perspective, to present Lloyd as being platonically beloved by women without coding him as someone who is not boyfriend material) have to have a discussion about his catch-factor:

REBECCA: Hey, I know this is a strange thing to say, but maybe Diane Court really likes Lloyd.
COREY: If you were Diane Court, would you honestly fall for Lloyd? (long pause) Yeah.
DC: Yeah!
REBECCA: Yeah.

And maybe it also helps that Lloyd is so in love with Diane — standing-outside-the-window-with-a-boombox kind of love. But of course, that kind of thing can backfire on a nice guy. In high school, my friends and I used to say that a romantic gesture had nothing to do with the gesture — it was the guy doing it. If you liked the guy sending you secret notes and flowers, it was romantic. If you didn’t, it was lame and stalkery. If it wasn’t cutie-pie John Cusack — Lloyd Dobler who we were all rooting for — standing out there with the boom box, we’d probably recommend that Diane call the cops.

I ran into that problem myself with Brandon. The sweeter and more romantic Brandon was to Amy (and, most importantly, the less that Amy responded to it) the more his actions were viewed by the readership as lame and desperate. So maybe it’s that Amy actually likes the equally lame (from an objective standpoint) stuff that Poe pulls. I mean, a half-eaten pack of LifeSavers as a present? Not exactly diamonds and chocolates.

As the reactions to the boys in the SSG series came in, I was fascinated by what readers chose to believe of Amy’s narration and what they discarded. All first person narrators are to some extent, unreliable, in that the reader only sees what they see. Even if they are telling the absolute truth to the reader, they are not omniscient, and they bring their own biases into the situation. Take, for example, Amy’s initial reaction in SSG to Clarissa’s overtures in the library. Because Amy hates Clarissa, she thinks Clarissa is trying to be bitchy to her and to question Amy’s right to be tapped by Rose & Grave. Later, of course, we discover that Clarissa was honestly curious. Readers assume Amy’s version of events, and are corrected only when Amy is.

(Of course, some of them are never corrected. I am always surprised by the number of letters I get from people who hate Clarissa, even though Amy grows to love her.)

So perhaps readers’ disdain for Brandon’s romantic efforts is a result of Amy’s disdain. And yet, Amy is plenty disdainful of Poe through both SSG and UTR, and I got lots of letters at the end of UTR that were pro-Poe. (Which, honestly, was a relief, given what I was about to do with the storyline.) It’s hard for me to say, since I’m the writer. Were there subtle manipulations coding the reader to root for Poe over Brandon? Sure, why not? Are my skills as a writer, then, not up to snuff if I haven’t succeeded in making you root for the romantic coupling of my choice?

Now there’s a question to get neurotic over.

It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.

(I found the most lovelorn pic of Spike I could for this part, and, sidebar, do you know if you just google the word “Spike” this is most of what comes up? No actual, you know, spikes.)

There are some old screenwriting tricks writers sometimes use to create sympathy for an otherwise unlikeable character. If he’s mean, show that other people — people we’re inclined to like — like him. Have him be sweet to children or small animals.This is called “save the cat.”

When we see Logan going to get the belt his father will beat him with, we understand there’s a reason behind his jackass nature. When Spike risks death to protect Dawn, we see that he really does care about both Summers girls. Personal sacrifice, vulnerability, unshakeable interest in the heroine (who can’t help but be at least flattered, though returning the interest is the brass ring)… these are all games that you get to play with the bad boy. But the good guy? He’s not otherwise unlikeable. The readers already know his vulnerabilities. They like him.

They just don’t lurrvvve him.

Except when they do? Why do we swoon over Lloyd Dobler when he’s nothing like Logan Echols?Or are they different populations entirely that do the swooning? Are some of always going to be Team Bad Boy and some of us always going to be Team Nice Guy? And what does that make of me, Team Nice Guy, except for that one little dalliance with Logan?

Stay tuned to find out!

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The Book Lover (quite adorably) gives it “four alicorns out of five” though spoiler warnings are in FULL EFFECT if you click through to the full review. Here’s a spoiler-free snippet: “It was an engaging novel with an easy-flowing story and I had it finished the day after I bought it. I was unable to find it at local libraries so I took a chance on it by buying my own copy. Sometimes a book that seems so good can not live up to expectations, but I’m happy to report that this one did not disappoint.”

The Book Scout rated it 48 out of 50 in an utterly spoiler-free review (yay!) and says:

“This was such an amazing book, it’s really hard to describe how I felt about it. To begin with, I thought the topic sounded so far fetched- I mean killer unicorns, come on! From the first page I was hooked. There was already a lot of action and I was learning things about unicorns I never in my wildest dreams would have believed. Peterfreund presents the idea of killer unicorns in a way that makes you believe in them. Her writing style has a nice flow, and the historical facts were great. I learned more about Alexander the Great and the Goddess Diana then I ever have in history class! Unicorns have always been something I would love to read about and this book just made me want to find out all I could about unicorns. Fast paced, exciting… this book had it all.

“Rampant took me longer to read then normal, because I was so caught up in school work and everything, but every free chance I had I was reading it. The ending left me wondering if there’s going to be a sequel! I really hope so. As I was reading I would shout out in surprise, stand up in shock (yes spilling my somewhat surprised cat onto the floor), and cheer with joy. I love books that draw emotions from me, and this book definitely did. I’ve been reading a jumble of book genres lately, but fantasy is one of my favorites, and this book was a refreshing look at how great fantasy can be. I would highly recommend this to anyone- even people who haven’t liked fantasy before.”

Gosh, I really loved this review. I mean, the fact that the reader (a high school freshman) liked the book and all is fantastic, but it really makes my day to learn that she liked it for the reasons I wrote it. I wrote this book for the teenage girl that I was — the one who was totally obsessed with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, not just because of how it made me thrill and shout and cry and shudder, but also because it had all that interesting stuff in there about what it was like to live in medieval Britain and the religions of the time and all that stuff. I was taking Latin classes, I was a big mythology nut, and I liked books that addressed all kinds of interesting stuff — Druids, unicorns, whatever! — while telling a fun story. (Actually, that’s still what I like, so go figure.)

This one definitely goes in the rainy day pile.

And, since I am now the recipient of every unicorn-based link on the web, I share with you these rather cool and scary Arts & Crafts-style unicorn stickers. (via a librarian friend on Twitter — btw, I think librarians must know all the cool blogs to follow, it’s how I discovered Awful Library Books, too).

But I digress. In other YA news, great article here on reading YA novels by YA author Mary Pearson, who is somewhat unsurprisingly astonished to hear how many people bash them a priori. (Srsly, I just read a blog comment by none other than Laura Kinsale saying she assumed something was a YA novel because of its — faulty, in her eyes — simplicity. Grrrrrr...)

[UPDATED TO ADD: Laura has clarified her statement in the comments and apparently they were two different thoughts: she thought the book in question was simplisitic and, separately and due to other factors, thought it read more like a YA novel. Sorry, Laura! Also, everyone go buy Laura's new book when it comes out from Sourcebooks next February! (or, y'know, FLOWERS FROM THE STORM or any of her other awesome backlist titles right now!)]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — teenagers read far more complex books in school than the average adult reads on their commute. They are spending hours every day analyzing Shakespeare and Hemingway and Faulkner. They are in TRAINING to look deeply into books. That’s the whole reason that adults invented bookclubs, to try to get some of that back. YA books are not dumbed down. Go read FEED or SKIN HUNGER and then come back and talk to me about that one.

Of course, maybe these teen readers aren’t necessarily reading the classics. And why? because they get more “points” for reading Gossip Girl. I’m totally serious. here’s a sobering article from the New York Times about a system implemented in over 75,000 schools in which students are encouraged to choose reading materials not based on literary merit, or even what interests them, but instead upon some mystical “points” system (for an article so focused on the vagaries of the system, it is never explained WHO assigns said “points”):

“You have to read the Harry Potter books” [the writer's daughter] said, exasperated. “They have all the points.”

She was right. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” topped out at 44 points, while “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” were worth 34 and 32.

Comparatively, Hamlet is 7 and Frankenstein 14. I guess it’s a word count thing? Must be, since Gossip Girl is 8.

I love Harry Potter as much as the next girl, and I’m not a fan of genre snobbery, either, but I can see why if you can get twice as many points for reading OOP, you might skip over the 22-point Sense & Sensibility. Is no quarter given to the fact that reading Hamlet might be, I don’t know — HARDER than reading Gossip Girl? And I know this system is usually in place for the students to choose extracurricular reading, and why shouldn’t that be fun, but it’s not just classics that are getting the low scores. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray, and The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, both recent YA fantasy novels– just like Harry Potter –are listed as 14 pts. each. (My novels aren’t listed. Zero points, I guess, or maybe Rampant is just too recent to make it in there.)

As much as I loved reading, I would have analyzed that list and read the books that were the most bang for my buck, even if I wasn’t necessarily interested in them. What a flawed system.

Anyone know more about this and want to shed some light on the subject?

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Mind Rain:

Your Favorite Authors on Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES Series

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Here is a very rare photo of Sarah Cross:

Here is one, in her “civilian” gear, no doubt plotting something dastardly and secretive with known Gallagher Girl spy and art thief Ally Carter:

So anyway, after I escaped their nefarious clutches and came home, I got my hands on an ARC of Sarah Cross’s debut novel, DULL BOY:

And it BLEW MY MIND. It’s funny, imaginative, fast-paced, colorful, action-packed, heartbreaking, and filled with all kinds of asides and in-jokes for folks who like superheroes. It’s about a boy named Avery who discovers he has superpowers… and that’s just the beginning.

And it came out last Thursday! Go! Run! Get your copy now!

I’m also going to be giving away THREE copies of DULL BOY right here on the blog. And here’s what you have to do to win one:

• 1 entry: for leaving a comment here telling me what your superhero name would be, if you were a superhero.
• 2 entries: for going to The Hero Factory, making yourself a superhero, and sending me/posting the picture. (It’s great fun and takes about thirty seconds).
• 3 entries: for doing one of the above AND posting it to your own blog with a link back to this contest (make sure to leave a comment here telling me you did so).

Contest lasts through the weekend. Winners will be announced on Monday.

UPDATES: I’m loving all the entries, guys! A short note, if you link us to the page you designed your superhero on at the factory, it does NOT save, and merely takes us to the generic “creation” page. You have to press the little download tab, save the file (it will be called “MyHero.jpg” then post it on a blog, website, or photo-storage site like flickr, photobucket. Twitpic, etc.

ALSO, Command Decision: If your “blog” merely consists of posts of you pointing to other contests/giveaways on the web and possesses NO OTHER CONTENT WHATSOEVER, it’s not a real blog, and will not qualify for an extra entry to the contest. I’m not saying you have to be dooce or Felicia Day, here, and I’m not saying that you have to have a review blog (though I’m amazed bby how many of you do! Wow!) just that you have an actual blog. You can talk about your pet mouse, or the weird stuff you found in your locker at the end of term, or your undying love for Edward Cullen, or your undying love for Tally Youngblood, or your undying love for Severus Snape. I don’t judge. Blogs consist of content, not scraping, and not solely of “entries” into contests. That’s this blogger’s decision.

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I need to get better at that.

For instance, here is this very cool blog post on Publisher’s Weekly about the strange ways people go about looking for books in bookstores. While the post itself is great, it’s really the comments section that follows that is truly priceless. Check it out for gems like these:

“One of my favorites was a phone call from a college student who said she needed ‘a copy of ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Jane Eyre. Would you like me to spell that for you?’ I had to put her on hold for a minute. I guess universities aren’t what they used to be.”

“One of my co-workers was helping a woman who wanted a book for her grandson. ‘He wants a book about a boy and his dog. I think it’s called Boy and his dog or boy and his wolf, maybe boy wolf.’ Until my co-worker said, ‘Beowulf?’ ‘Yes!’ said the woman. ‘That’s it, Beowulf.’”

“We had “Onion in the Closet” in lieu of “Indian in the Cupboard.” Also, a request for “a children’s book about European trains” turned out to be Thomas the Tank Engine.”

Makes one wonder how people have requested one of my books over the years.

Also, those of you who have read/are about to read TAP & GOWN will note a similar joke within its pages.

Yes, I’m a tease.

Speaking of Tap & Gown, there’s some upcoming release fun to be had, including, but not limited to:

• Giveaways! Giveaways! Giveaways! (the book lover’s equivalent of Girls! Girls! Girls!)
• An Interview with yours truly.
• More dossiers.
• The posting of the last of the Secret Stories
• Possibly another Tap & Gown Show. It depends upon my schedule.

And finally, I leave you with Random House’s WHICH TORTALL HEROINE ARE YOU? quiz. I was Alianne, which is probably closest, I agree.

Alianne

You are most like Alianne. You are rebellious and cunning. Like her mother, Alanna, you risk your own life to protect those around you, but you would rather they did not know it. Your passion for justice is just as strong as your compassion for others and they often conflict with one another.

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Anyway, Justine mentioned that she hadn’t read the books in years. I then gave her a quick rundown of the Anne and Gilbert arc throughout the series. Here goes:

[NOTE: I couldn't find *my* Anne of Green Gables, which was a blue illustrated hardcover with Anne pressing her face against the blossoms of The Great White Way of Delight, so just enjoy this still from the movie, which illustrates my point quite well, I think.]

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

Gilbert: I think you’re adorable, but I’m young and cannot properly flirt.

Anne: I hate you! I hate you! You have humiliated me in the worst way possible! I shall not speak to you for years!

[Years pass]

Gilbert: Gosh. I really made you mad. Here, let me save your life when you quite recklessly choose to drown yourself in a leaky boat.. I’m really sorry about that whole “carrots” incident, can we be friends?

Anne: No, I hate you! I shall never forgive you, Go Away!

[More years pass]

Gilbert: Gosh Anne, I’m so sorry to hear about your foster father. Here, have my teaching job. I’ll trek all the way across the island every day instead.

Anne: Oh, wow. Guess you aren’t a jerk. Fine. We can be friends.

ANNE OF AVONLEA

Gilbert: I’m so glad we’re friends. I think you’re grand. It’s too bad I don’t see you more often, on account of me trekking all over the island every day to go to that other teaching job I took so you could stay here in Avonlea. Gee, I’m noble. Also, have you noticed all our peers are getting married?

Anne: Huh, how about that.

Marilla and Mrs. Lynde: Gee, that Anne and Gilbert are hanging out a lot together — well, as much as they can considering how far away he works and all. Bet they’ll be getting married soon.

Anne: Oh, you silly old biddies!

Gilbert: Anne, don’t you think they’ve got a point?

Anne: Huh?

ANNE OF THE ISLAND

Random Dude #1’s sister: Anne, will you marry my brother?

Anne: LOL! I mean, huh? I mean, no. I, um, need a real romance.

Random Dude #2: Anne, will you marry me?

Anne: LOL! I mean, huh? Oh, come now. Don’t be silly. I need a real romance.

Gilbert: Okay, Anne. Enough is enough. I think I’m in love with you.

Anne: What? No! We’re friends! And haven’t you been listening about all that real romance stuff?

Gilbert: But that’s the best kind of marriage! We’re so alike, and we get along so well, and why are you being so strangely obstinate about all this?

Anne: Hell no! Go away! Never speak to me again!

Gilbert: Fine, you’re an idiot. I’m going to date this rich beautiful girl over here.

Anne: Hmmm, whenever I see Gilbert with that rich beautiful girl, I feel odd. Wonder why that is?

[Years pass]

Philippa: Hi, I have nothing to do with this, really, I just wanted to pop in and point out that I’m totally awesome, and I’m in this book, too. And I also have a pretty rocking love story in this book, which one sould not ignore for the sake of Anne and Gilbert’s little drama. (Oh, and I lent my name to a character in Rampant.) As you were.

Romantic Dude: Why, hello there, Anne. I’m dashing and rich.

Anne: Now this is what I’m talking about. Swoon!

Everyone Else Anne Knows: Sure. Fine. Whatever.

Anne: I’m so happy with my Romantic Dude. Except his taste in flowers is deplorable. Also, I really wish people would stop telling me that Gilbert is engaged to his rich, beautiful girlfriend. Not that I care. I totally don’t. Still,  feel a strange urge to wear the flowers that Gilbert, to whom I have not spoken in ages, randomly sent me this evening, rather than the flowers my boyfriend sent me. It has nothing to do with anything except for my boyfriend’s aforementioned deplorable taste in flowers, I assure you of that. Everyone says that roses are more becoming to me than orchids.

Everyone Else Anne Knows: Riiiiiiight.

Romantic Dude: Oh, Anne: Thou art more fair and lovely still. Will thoust marry me? (I totally know you’re going to say yes.)

Anne: Wait a second, I can’t marry this stick. I’ve been such a fool.

Everyone Else Anne Knows: {forehead slap}

Gilbert: Oops, I studied too hard and am dying. And Anne is engaged to someone else. Oh, woe is me.

Anne: I love Gilbert! Alas, he is dying! Woe is me!

Gilbert: Wait, psych. I’m totally alive. And you’renot engaged!

Anne: Why, hi there, big boy.

Gilbert: We should get married. LIKE I SAID YEARS AGO.

Anne: Yes. I capitulate to your superior understanding in this matter.

ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS

Anne: While you are in medical school and we are participating in the longest engagement known to mankind, I shall write you endless, chatty love letters that the author will mysteriously cut from the manuscript.

Gilbert: My fiancee is awesome.

Anne: And since I’m all set up, romantically, I will spend the bulk of this book fixing other people’s problems with my clever and winsome ways.

Gilbert: See? Awesome.

ANNE’S HOUSE OF DREAMS

Anne: We’re married and deliriously happy.

Gilbert: Rather.

Leslie: Hi, I’m unutterably miserable and feel a sort of perverse joy that one time that Anne has a miscarriage. But we end up being friends and I get a love story too.

ANNE OF INGLESIDE

Anne: We’ve been married for years and have a house full of rugrats.

Gilbert: You know it, baby.

Anne and Gilbert’s Rugrats: Hi. The book is really all about us and our misadventures. The title is a misnomer.

[At the very end of the book]

Anne: But wait, one evening Gilbert looks kind of distracted about something — coudln’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that he had two patients die last week — it must be that HE NO LONGER LOVES ME!

Gilbert: Huh?

Anne: In fact, when we go to this party that your rich and beautiful ex-girlfriend will be attending ON OUR ANNIVERSARY, I shall make a point to look as awful and dowdy as possible to prove it.

Gilbert: I’m sorry my dear, did you say something?

Anne: See? I was right! You don’t love me!

Gilbert: Hey, Anne, I got us tickets to Europe.

Anne: What? OMG, I was totally WRONG!

THE END

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