Author Interview and Giveaway - Sean Cummings.

Hi there! Here is another Author Interview for you guys! As you can see this one is a bit different because it's a video! How cool is that?!

Sean Cummings is the author of Poltergeeks, An awesome book, due for release in October. Sean and the wonderful Strange Chemistry have offered us two copies of this book to giveaway here on the #YABluewater blog! All you have to do is follow this blog and leave a comment here on this post about what you thought of the interview, Easy! remember to follow and comment to enter. You have until Midnight (BST) on Sunday to enter. Winners will be announced on Monday morning, so be sure to check back the to see if it was you!

Good luck to all of you who enter!

Edited to add;

I have decided to extend the competition until midnight on Saturday. So you guys now have until then to enter, so spread the word!! lol I will announce the two winners on Sunday morning. Good luck. Please tweet this post to help get the word out. Thanks!

See you next post,

Kaylie :0)

Guest post - Cinder Review

Cinder [Lunar Chronicles, Book One] by Marissa Meyer – 4/5 stars

Cyborgs and Lunars and Lols, oh my!
Marissa Meyer’s debut novel, Cinder, is a brilliant postmodern fairytale-reboot. The tale of Cinderella has been dusted-off, re-wired, and teleported into a future New Beijing. Cinderella is a cyborg, her prince is a hoodie-wearing emperor-in-waiting, and a mysterious plague sweeping the planet isn’t the only thing threatening to disrupt the ball!

Film and TV are awash with updated and re-worked fairytale adaptations at the moment, but you won’t find a grungy mechanic salivating over sweet buns with her android sidekick in Snow White and the Huntsman or Mirror Mirror.

We Have a Winner!!!

A huge thank you to all of you who entered the giveaway, and to all of you who helped to spread the word!

I used random.org to pick the winner for the ARC copy of Broken by A E Rought. The winner is......

Hollie Georgiana!!

"I adore the cover for this book, I love the contrast between the white and the red. So eye catching! Following your blog :)"

Congratulations! If you send us an email at yabluewater@gmail.com with your name and address, then we can make sure that your copy is sent to you as soon as it becomes available.

Last of all I would like to say a big thank you to Strange Chemistry, for letting me get involved with the cover reveal, and being generally awesome!! Thanks guys!

See you next post,

Kaylie :0)

Author Interview - Kim Curran

Hi there!! Here is another excellent interview for you guys! ( I spoil you lot don't I? lol)
This one is with the awesome Kim Curran. She has her debut book out in September, it's called Shift and I can't wait to read it!....



With the release of your debut book Shift later this year, how are you feeling about life as a writer?

Terrified pretty much sums it up. But incredibly excited as well.Knowing that in a matter of weeks people around the world will be able to walk into a shop, or go online, and buy my book, it’s the dream come true. But that comes with lots of anxiety. Will they like it? Will anyone other than my mother buy a copy? But one thing is sure: I know that I don’t want to do any thing else with my life.

 

COVER REVEAL - Broken by A E Rought



Yay! This is our first cover reveal here at #YABluewater. It's rather exciting!

Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.

Author Interview - Yvonne Marrs

Here is the first of many exclusive interviews we will be bringing you over the next 4 weeks or so. It is with the author of When The Sax Man Plays, Yvonne Marrs. You can visit her blog here to find out the latest happenings in the world of Weston.



What are you reading at the moment?


I'm reading and researching (online) for my ghost writing project, London's Dark Lines, at the moment. However, I bought an old copy of Du Maurier's "Rebecca" I'm looking forward to reading soon.


What do you do when your not writing?

I play saxophone and run our photography business with my husband, Weston Photographics. We've just returned from our annual pilgrimage to Eastbourne and Wimbledon for the British grass court tennis season, so I've been very busy with my camera. We're off to the Olympics soon, for both the tennis and the judo (I was a judoka in the Scottish Junior Judo Squad in my teens) something I'm thrilled about. I also must admit to being a shopaholic, and an avid Radley fan (I own 36 Radley handbags!)


Who is your favourite author, or what is your favourite book?

Book Club July 2012

I want to start off by saying thank you to all the people who came to our second meeting last night. There were a few new faces, which is fantastic, and a few more familiar faces too! We had a great time talking about all things YA. This month we were discussing Shift, by Em Bailey.

Overall it scored a 4/5 from us. As a whole we liked it, a few of us loved it! One of us didn't.

We liked the sweet romance between Olivia and Lachlan. It was nicely underplayed. It wasn't the instant soul altering attraction that has become almost commonplace in YA. It grew slowly. Lachlan didn't try to change Olivia, he accepted her for who and how she was, and was happy. It's nice to read for a change. Instead of one person have more 'power' than the other, they were both equally clueless as to how to behave with one another. To have two normal teens discover slowly who they are separately, and together was real and refreshing to read. That being said we felt that the romance was rather superfluous to the plot. As the main themes of the book were friendship and trust, we felt that it would have been better if Olivia and Lachlan had developed a platonic relationship instead. They obviously had a real connection, and it would have been a great opportunity to show teens that people of the opposite sex can be great friends too. We felt that Olivia needed a friend more than a boyfriend.

We Have A Winner!!!

Congratulations to Katie Wilkinson!!! You have won a (huge!!) signed Lauren Kate poster!

Here is your entry for everyone to read;

"I absolutely adore Lauren Kate's books because ever since i picked it up from my school library in year 7 i have been addicted. The first day i saw it i thought wow i love that book cover and then i read the blurb and it looked so interesting i took it home and started reading it. I read the first chapter which got me really interested and I finished the book in 2 days and im telling you honestly it changed my life forever. I then searched for the next book and i found Lauren Kate’s website. I got hooked onto the series and my family couldn’t believe how committed i was to it. But it wasn't just any old book, it was my book that i had found i could escape too in my imagination, because the book was so beautifully detailed. When i got ‘Torment’ and ‘The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove’ I finished ‘Torment’ in two days and then went on to read 'The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove' which i read in one day. In year 8 i started D.T and my teacher told us we had to make a travel board game but with any theme. I thought about it for about 2 days and

Won't Someone Please Think of the Children?

Here is another post from fellow Bookseller Darran Stobbart, about the current debate surrounding age appropriate reading for kids....



So, yesterday morning, authors G.P. Taylor and Patrick Ness appeared on BBC Breakfast to debate the idea that children’s literature has“gone too far” when it comes to horror, violence, and themes which some viewers may find distressing. This sparked an online debate, becoming the top trending subjects on Twitter all morning, and allowing other authors to weigh in on the matter, most notably the awesome Charlie Higson. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the debate, since I was at work when it was on, but I followed the aftermath on Twitter with eagerness and after reading this article on the Guardian website to catch up, I felt it necessary to add my own little opinion from a bookseller in the North of England. Because, y’know, that’s what the Internet is for.
For those who aren’t familiar with the argument, it seems G.P. Taylor is in favour of introducing a rating system for books for kids,similar to the one’s imposed on films and video games, after he was informed that his new novels had “crossed a line” when it came to scaring youngsters. Ness stood in the opposite corner, seeing this as a fruitless exercise that would only serve to push children away from reading.

Sneak Peak

So there are a lot of exciting things on the way! Here's a little taster of whats coming up in the next few weeks.

Want to know more about the world of YA from a male perspective? Watch out for the upcoming interview with author Chris Farnell. We will be talking about YA books for guys and his debut novel Mark II.

Event - Lauren Kate Signing and Competition!

Photo by @RandomPublicist

 I want to start off by saying a huge thank you to everyone involved in yesterdays book signing. Thank you to all the brilliant fans who turned up! You were all so nice! Thank you to the other Waterstones staff who ran the event, Lloyd and Claire. Last but not least a massive thank you to Lauren Kate and her publicist, you guys were awesome, and all the fans had nothing but great things to say about you!

Lauren Kate Giveaway!

To tie in with the Lauren Kate signing we have this Saturday at 12:30, we will be giving away a signed promotional poster! Details on how to win will be posted on here and on twitter on Sunday morning.

Lauren Kate will be in our Bluewater store from 12:30 this Saturday to sign copies of her new book Rapture.

She has kindly agreed to sign the poster for us to give away as a prize to one of you! I will be taking photos of the event and talking with people in the que about why they love Laurens books. (So keep a lookout for me if you would like a mention on here!) Then I will be posting all about it on Sunday morning, so make sure you pop back then to find out how it went and how you could win the poster.

See you next post,

Kaylie :0)

Author Interview - Zoe Marriott!

Hi there readers! Wow do we have a treat for you today!! One of my favourite YA authors, Zoe Marriot, has done an interview for us! She has written three amazing books so far and has a few more on the way to. Waterstones Bluewater has chosen Zoe as our YA Author of the month! So stay tuned to see more posts about Zoe's books, as we will be doing reviews for each of them over the next four weeks.

*Happy Dance!*


Which books have influenced your life the most?


I think everything I've read has influenced me! Even books I've hated - they teach you how not to do things, and sometimes make you so cross that you end up writing something just to show that author how it *should* be done. Reading The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton as a kid made me a life-long reader. Discovering Robin McKinley in my early teens transformed the way I looked at fairytales and language. Re-reading Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness Quartet at the age of eighteen is what made me realise that I needed to be writing fantasy for young adults. My first read of The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold permanently expanded my mind. And I'm still learning and being influenced!

Members Post - Kaylie Ashton

Well here is my Members Bio interview for the #YABluewater reading group. Even though they're my questions, it is still hard! lol



Name.


Kaylie Elizabeth Ashton


Age


27

What was the first YA book that you read?


The Twilight saga. I had put it off for over a year as there was a lot of hype surrounding it. My best friend finally convinced me to give them a go in the end. I loved them so much that I reread the whole saga four times in a row!



If you could be any YA character who would it be and why?


I think that there are a lot of very strong female characters in YA lit at the moment so it would be hard to choose!! Gun to my head though, I think it would have to be Tessa, from Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices series.

Bookclub Book Suggestions

Hi there!

I'm listing here some of the books that have been suggested for our monthly #YABluewater meetings. Some have been suggested by our members, some by others via emailand twitter.

Shodows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott.

Across the Universe by Beth Revis.

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by Ann Brashares.

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber.

The Haunting Of Tabitha Grey By Vanessa Curtis.

Heart-Shaped Bruise By Tanya Byrne.

OK so that's the list so far, but as we receive suggestions I'll add them too. If you have any books you would like to nominate then leave a comment bellow with th ebook title and author.

See you next post :0)

Kaylie x