Something Fierce This Way Comes: Fall 2012 Fierce Reads Tour

Are you ready to read something fierce?

After the success of our spring 2012 Fierce Reads tour (read about it here in Publisher's Weekly!), we're back this fall with six NEW Fierce Reads authors for the tour, which also features three familiar faces.

 
Featuring  Ann Aguirre, Elizabeth Fama, Lish McBride and Marissa Meyer:

• September 18: Changing Hands Bookstore in Pheonix, AZ
• September 19: Tattered Cover in Denver, CO
• September 20: Left Bank Books in St. Louis, MO (This stop also features author Jessica Brody!)
• September 21: Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinatti, OH
• September 22: Next Chapter Bookshop in Milwaukee, WI
• September 23: Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC (This stop will not feature author Marissa Meyer)

Featuring Gennifer Albin, Caragh O'Brien, Marie Rutkoski and Leigh Bardugo:

• October 16: Lake Forest Bookstore in Lake Forest, IL
• October 17: Politics & Prose at the Bethesda Library outside of Washington D.C.
• October 18: Cover to Cover Bookstore in Columbus, OH
• October 19: Square Books in Oxford, MS
• October 20: Children's Book World in Haverford, PA
• October 21: New York City (Exact location TBD!)

Learn more about the Fall 2012 Fierce Reads titles at MacTeenBooks.com, our sister blog and become a fan of Fierce Reads on Facebook for 

Go to our Fierce Reads Facebook page to RSVP to the stop closest to your hometown!

---

Fierce Reads

Fierce Reads is an online community and a brand that groups, well, fierce books together so that teens can interact with books they love and be a part of the discovery of new books.

On our Fierce Reads Facebook Page fans can talk about their favorite fierce titles, enter for a chance to win FREE books, see exclusively fierce content and download the  song featured in the Fierce Reads book trailer (among many, many other things).

This summer, four debut authors -- Anna Banks, Leigh Bardugo, Jennifer Bosworth and Emmy Laybourne -- who each wrote fierce, funny and sometimes terrifying stories toured the country (literally from sea to shining sea) together for the first Fierce Reads book tour. 

Learn more about our spring 2012 Fierce Reads on MacTeenBooks.com! 

Teenage Sherlock Returns for a Shocking and Surprising Adventure on American Soil

As the editor of the U.S. editions of Andrew Lane’s series about Sherlock Holmes’s formative years, I have known for a months what a good read the second book in the series is. Rebel Fire will more than satisfy fans of Death Cloud with a similar blend of action and outlandish plot invention together with echoes and harbingers of many of the qualities that attract detective-story fans to the original “grown up” Sherlock tales.

In the U.K., the book was published as Red Leech, a title quickly explained in the deliciously creepy opening scene. It’s also Mr. Lane’s nod to a passing reference Dr. Watson makes in Conan Doyle’s story from The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Contemplating three thick volumes of case summaries for the year 1894, Watson pauses momentarily to tease us with a seven-word recollection of “the repulsive story of the red leech” before diving into his narration of “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez.”

Disgusting blood-suckers definitely play a role in the second book but are not the main attraction. For the American audience in particular that would be the plot connections to the Civil War, and the fact that the story involves Sherlock in a kidnapping and chase sequence that carries him all the way from London to New York City and beyond. My colleagues and I felt that a title which suggested these unexpected themes and setting was the ticket.

In Rebel Fire, Andrew Lane has taken the preposterous and made it believable: What if John Wilkes Booth had not been killed at Garrett’s farm days after the assassination in 1865? What if he had escaped to England, and was now, in 1868, being used as a figurehead by a villain with a diabolical plan to resurrect elements of the Confederate Army to stage another uprising—with only a teenage boy from England and his two friends in a position to stop him?

I will let the rave review from The Book Zone (for Boys) take it from here:

“We are now given a chance to get to know [young Sherlock] properly; this is often difficult in a first-in-series book for young readers who demand fast pace and regular action scenes, and so second-in-series books are all the more important when it comes to character development. Andrew Lane certainly rises to this challenge with [Rebel Fire] as we start to observe the genesis of some of the mannerisms and beliefs that are so well known in the full-formed adult version. Some of these moments in the story are very subtle, some are far more obvious, but almost every one I spotted sent a small shiver of delight down my spine . . . Death Cloud was packed full of great action sequences, and the sequel is no different in this respect. Sherlock finds himself escaping from the jaws of certain death time after time as the story progresses, but unlike modern heroes such as Alex Rider he does not have gadgets to help him out of sticky situations, he has to rely purely on his own intelligence and desire to stay alive. He is of course aided in this by his good friends Matty and Virginia, although quite often the final life-saving decisions end up falling to Sherlock as he finds himself having to get all three of them out of perilous situations . . . As in Death Cloud, we see Sherlock continuing to be tutored by the charismatic American, Amyus Crow. We also learn a little more about Crow’s background and the reason he is living in England. The author ties this in with real events of 1860s America, revealing that Crow is an agent for the American government, sent to Britain to track down war criminals from the Civil War, a war that caused so many men to lose their lives at the beginning of that decade . . . Another similarity that this book has with its predecessor is a particularly nasty villain. Death Cloud brought us the deranged and deformed Baron Maupertuis; [Rebel Fire] introduces us to the just as deranged and deformed Duke Balthassar. I won’t say much about this particularly evil man other than that he has a fondness for leeches, using them on . . . let your imaginations run wild at the thought of that!

Some might say that the two Andrew Lane–created villains we have seen so far are over the top but I love them, and so did the Victorians—their penny dreadfuls and other publications were full of them.”

I couldn’t agree more! In Rebel Fire, get ready for a bad guy like you’ve never met before.

—Wesley Adams, Executive Editor, Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

Melody Burning

Author Whitley Strieber talks about writing his first YA novel, Melody Burning

When my wife Anne first had the idea about a boy who was living rough in an apartment building falling in love with one of the tenants, we immediately wondered if this was possible. Could somebody spend years living in a big building without being caught?

We began to do research, and at first it seemed that it would be impossible. Our initial thought was to set the story in one of the grand old buildings in New York, but we found that they were constructed in a very different way from modern buildings. Their solid masonry construction doesn't allow for crawl spaces, and the elevators tend to be isolated in single shafts, deathtraps for somebody who might want to use one as an escape route.

Modern buildings have more crawlspace, but they are also liberally provided with security systems, including alarms on doors that lead into areas where the public isn't allowed.

However, when we actually looked at some of them, we could see how somebody could become a ghost tenant in one, using empty apartments and moving from floor to floor in the wide elevator shafts, even jumping from car to car to ride the roofs. It would be dangerous, but it would be possible, especially if the individual was skilled and strong.

Modern buildings have ganged elevator shafts, but apartments do not have dropped ceilings, which is why our main character, Beresford, builds small hatches in closets that have small crawlspaces above them. Using his hatches and these areas full of wiring conduit, he can make it from apartment to apartment, and also check to see when a given place is empty or its tenants are sleeping, so he can make use of it.

But he has a problem—a growing problem. When he was younger, it was easy for him to move through these very confined spaces, but now that he's a teenager, he's getting bigger, and fast. More and more, he's forced to use the halls, and risk the building's extensive security system.

So the staff knows that he's there, and they want to get him out of the structure. The security team simply wants to get rid of a squatter, but the superintendent has a more sinister reason to want this man not only out of the building, but preferably dead.

A wildcard enters the picture in the form of the lonely young rock star Melody, who is highly intelligent and talented, but also big-hearted. She 'tames' this boy, whose youthful desires mean that he is practically living in and around her apartment. Soon, the two of them join forces, and unexpectedly find themselves deeply in love and in terrible jeopardy at the same time.

I had a wonderful time writing Melody Burning, and I hope you have a wonderful time reading it. Beresford and Melody, characters of my wife Anne's creation, will always have a very special place in my heart.

An Impromptu Review

by Jay Clark

Fresh off my first ever *starred* review for my debut novel, The Edumacation of Jay Baker, I was riding high last week.  Then, at a party over the weekend, I ran smack-dab into a Debbie Downer.  After filling me in on the horrible reaction she’d had to this year’s flu shot, Debbie asked how “the whole book thing” was going.  Trying not to rock back and forth on my heels like the little boy I still am, I told her about my review.  She nodded noncommittally, then asked how I’d feel when I got a crappy one.

“Fine,” I said stiffly.  “Gotta take the good with the bad, you know?”

Squinting her eyes, Debbie did not appear convinced.  She’d seen how paper-thin my skin was only moments earlier, when she’d made fun of my “John Mayer” hair and I’d gotten defensive about it.

“But it’ll be really hard, you know?” she prodded, pretending to be sympathetic.  “Spending all that time on something and then having people judge it.  I mean, I couldn’t do it.” 

I was tempted to agree wholeheartedly, facedly, and assedly.  Instead, I clutched my stomach and said, “Have to run to the bathroom.  I’ll be right back.” 

I never came back.  But you know what came my way this week?  The not-so-great review Nostradebbie had predicted.  Cue the “Wah-waaaah” trumpet noise.

It was more of a mixed review, really – a lot of good-not-great stuff about my tendency to overwrite and insert jokes where they’re—pa-dum-pum!—not needed.  Wait just a second, I thought.  Did my mom write this?  In other words, it was nothing I hadn’t heard before.  But still.  I’m human.  My robot operation isn’t scheduled until 2041.  And if I had my choice between sticks & stones or a big flaming pile of words, bring it on, Rock of Gibraltar!  Oh, what the heck – let Debbie & the Gang have their say, too.  I’ll just shield my body underneath a pile of magazines (the one with my starred review) and, of course, steel-infused copies of The Edumacation of Jay Baker. 

Talking about Prized

By Nancy Mercado, Editor (@editorgurl)

Working on a second book in a trilogy can be terrifying, especially when the first book was so warmly embraced. Will the second book live up to fan’s expectations? Will it stand on its own? Will it be a satisfying bridge to the third and final book?

These were the questions that author Caragh O’Brien and I asked ourselves when we sat down to edit Prized, the second book in the Birthmarked Trilogy. In Birthmarked readers met sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone for the first time. Gaia was battling against the repressive regime of the Enclave, all the while dealing with personal loss. Now, in Prized, Gaia has fled from the Enclave and must fight for her baby sister’s survival in the new and matriarchal society of Sylum.

Scary as second books can be, I knew that Caragh would get there with Prized, mostly because I deeply trust her writing process. She has this brave way of putting her characters in perilous positions and then watching patiently as they figure their way out. In Prized she allows Gaia to be in some very tough situations and she encourages her readers to contemplate the nuances of this new society that is, while appealing at first to Gaia, inherently unfair. Caragh is also not afraid of tackling controversial topics that might make people uncomfortable, and she does so with such delicate and thoughtful attention that I’m never concerned that we’ve crossed a line.  

We started working on Prized in early 2010, and in my editorial letters to Caragh I used phrases like “unfolding” and “uncovering” to describe our process together, and that’s truly what it felt like. Caragh would send me a draft and I would ask her questions and we’d probe deeper into what the book was really all about. I hope you enjoy the unfolding of Prized and that you find it to be a satisfying second book in the trilogy.