Character Guest Post from Charity Delafield

Today I am super excited to be taking part in the blog tour for Ian Beck's The Haunting of Charity Delafield.

I have a special guest post from miss Delafield herself to share with you all:

From the secret jottings of Miss Charity Delafield

Stone Green Hall

Warwickshire

_______________________

(An incomplete fragment found written in the wide margins of an old book of

mathematical problems)

________________________

I live here at Stone Green Hall which is a house set on a rise and surrounded by a garden full of trees cut in square shapes and white stone statues. Rose told me it is a very big and important house. I wouldn’t know because I have never been to any other house. Rose said that she grew up in a very small house which itself was not much bigger than the nursery where my rocking horse lives.

*

I am trying to make sense of all the odd things that have happened to me recently. It seems now that even just a very short while ago, a few days at the most, everything was so straightforward. My routines were fixed and my life went on in the usual way in this house.

*

Every day Rose brushes my hair, which is fine and easily tangled so that Rose must brush it hard at least seventy five times in the morning and the same number of times in the evening before I go to bed. When I was younger I used to wriggle and cry and complain because the brushing hurt me so much. Now, especially after all the things that have happened, I just stare back at Rose in the looking glass. I won’t let her see me cry, I won’t even wriggle because I am braver now and things have happened and I have something secret to do.

It started the other morning. I was excited by two things. First I found some secret chocolate that someone (who I will not name in case there is trouble) had left for me in the saddlebag of my Rocking horse. The second thing was that it had snowed and the garden, when I looked out from my window, was all covered in soft white and so beautiful.

After my hair was brushed I hoped I was to be allowed out for a walk in the fresh snow with Rose.

Father said something at breakfast which made me very unhappy. I was allowed outside and Mr Tompkins came with us. I noticed that he lifted his little black paws up out of the snow very quickly as he walked. I don’t think cats like getting their paws cold. Then a big something happened which excited me and made me forget just for a moment how unhappy I was.

*

I met the mysterious old lady at the gates. She told me that she often walked by hoping to see me. She had been waiting for a long time to get a chance to speak to me. She told me something which was very exciting and I gave her my secret chocolate to eat because she looked so hungry. She blessed me and told me that I must look for a certain thing. It is a special thing, and it is also a secret thing.

I cannot reveal what it is. I cannot write it here in this space, in this horrible book next to all of these mathematics problems. The old lady said that I must find a secret thing before my next birthday. I will just write that it is a very important secret and that I will not write down exactly what it is. Instead I shall keep it to myself because Rose might read these words somehow, and she didn’t approve of the old lady at all. She shooed her away from the gates quite harshly and Rose said that the old lady was dirty and a beggar and she was worried that I might have touched her and caught a terrible illness. Instead of working out mathematics problems Father allowed me to play on that first morning after the snow had fallen.

*

I played with Rose and Edward. It was a game called Hide & Seek something which I had never played before. Mr Tompkins and I were sent to hide first and in the place where we were hiding I found a hidden envelope and inside it was a key. I don’t want to write too much about the key either, because of the key I found something else, something very mysterious, and Rose was frightened and cross and she took the key away from me at once.

*

If I look out of the Nursery window now I can see that the snow has finally stopped its dancing fall through the air. It has settled in big white patches on the tops of the square cut trees.

The trees march in two long lines all the way down the avenue to the padlocked iron gates. Beyond the gates and across the winding road is the forest. I have never been into the forest but I think the old lady lives in there somewhere among those dark and twisted trees and one day I hope I will go there and find her again.

I am watchful now. I can wait patiently. I have a task, and it is to find what I have to find and I will keep on looking for it. I have a new place to explore in the house too and I shall go there as soon as everyone is asleep. I think I know where Rose has hidden the key that she took away from me. I shall be very patient and very watchful and when the time is right I shall go and get the key and then who knows what I might find…?

I have to say a huge thanks to Charity for this post, and to the wonderful Ian Beck for creating such a brilliant character. Also massive thank yous are owed to Random House Children's Books for sending me a review copy of the book and allowing me to take part in the tour!

Be sure to stop by the rest of the blogs taking part in this awesome blog tour!

Hunger Games Official Trailer

Today is the official release day of The Hunger Games trailer.I am in love with it, I was pretty unsure about the teaser railer we saw a while back from the MTV awards, but this one has made me think again. I am pretty happy with the casting and the way it look so far.
I really like the little glimpse of Rue that you get when she's peeking out from a door. I also really like the fact that you kind of see Katniss in the chariot on fire, but you kind of don't at the same time, I want to wait for the full movie to see that bit as I think it will be amazing.
What do you all think of the trailer?

Inside Out by Maria V Snyder UK Giveaway

I have an awesome giveaway for all my UK followers today!

You can win yourself a copy of Inside Out by Maria V Snyder!

All you have to do is fill in the rafflecopter below!
Giveaway run from 14/11/11 till 2/12/11
Good luck!

Review: Crossed (Matched #2) - Ally Condie

Name: Crossed (Matched #2)

Author: Ally Condie

General Release Date: 24th November 2011

Date I finished it: 5th November 2011

Type: Paperback ARC

From: Razorbill 

My Rating: 4/5 Stars

I was super excited to get a UK ARC of Crossed, it is out on November 24th over here.

I actually devoured this book pretty much in one night. Most of you will already know I am a huge YA dystopian fan and I loved the first book in this series, Matched. I actually squealed with excitement when I opened a parcel and found this book inside and started reading it straight away! 

Crossed picks up right where we left Cassia and Ky in Matched, separated and with Cassia vowing to track down and find Ky one way or another. The book itself is told from both Cassia and Ky's point of view through alternating chapters. I'm not usually a big fan of different viewpoints but it worked really well in this case because the two characters are not actually together. It's tells the reader two different stories and allows you to see into both of their life's at the same time.

While Cassia has been working in the labour camps with other girls, living a hard but almost normal life. Ky has been living in what is perceived as another labour camp, but is infact a death camp. Where unwanted members of society are dumped in order to wait out their deaths. In a last ditch attempt Cassia manages to find her way to this so called death camp, just when Ky has managed to escape! The rest of the story involves   her follwing Ky's trail and hoping they will find each other again.

I'm not going to give too much of the plot away, so I won't say if they do meet up again or not. You'll have to find that one out for yourself!

To me the book started off really well, it had bee a while since I was in the Matched world, so it took me the first couple of chapters to get back up to speed with the characters and this exact dystopian world. I found that I managed to pick everything back up again really quickly with only a little recap needed at the start of the book.

As the story progresses I did get more and more hooked. Was Cassia ever going to find Ky, or would she be stuck wandering around in this canyon forever? Would the Society find them first? Would they die of hunger?

I loved all these questions that kept popping up throughout the book, these plus the tragic love story of the two characters is what really kept me hooked.

I also really enjoyed the new characters that were introduced throughout this book, some of them became more meaningful as others as you get to the end and others you can't help but fall for when they are first introduced. I think Ally Condie did a really great job of introducing the new characters and the way she had them interact with both Cassia and Ky. I also loved the fact that some old faces pop up in this book as well, and Cassia's grandfather is mentioned a few times as well. It's nice to see that some of my favourite characters from Matched haven't been forgotten.

Towards the end the story did seem to feel a bit dragged out to me. I feel like there could have been some time in the canyon cut out. Almost all of this book is set in a canyon. I can see why it's needed though, This is the middle book in the series and everything needs to be set up for the big finale in the next book. The canyon sort of represents a turning point for the characters in the book as well. They are no longer in the Society, but also not quite free yet. They are also stuck in this awkward in-between stage, just like the book itself.

Overall I did really love it. The book is filled with suspense, romance and an element of the unknown.

It was nice to see Cassia and Ky start to grow up and realise they hold their own fate in their hands. I cannot wait to see what book three will bring!

Guest Post from David Farland

Today I am super excited to have a guest post from David Farland, author of the awesome, new, interactive novel, Nightingale.

Reading in the Future

Imagine that you put on your “reading glasses.” The glasses are dark, fitted with lasers and high-quality stereo earbuds, so that as you put them on, your entire field of vision is captured. A laser inside the glasses flashes a novel title on the interior surface of your eye.

Of course, the book you see is my book (why not, it's my fantasy). The letters start small, off in the distance and they quickly draw closer to you, but they don't stop, they wash right over you and just when it seems they're all around you, they explode in a burst of light, “Nightingale, by David Farland.” You can hardly imagine what life was like before 3D. As soon as you read the last word, a laser with a computer link that tracks your eye movement cues the background music, and images begin to flash in your eye—a holographic video-clip of the character of Bron, as an infant, being abandoned outside the door of a cheap hotel in the Utah desert. The camera pans up to the face of his mother, Sommer, bitter and broken, with tears in her eyes. We flash to the prologue, where Sommer runs through a forest at night, her breathing deep, while dogs snarl and bark as they give pursuit. Fireflies rise up around her.

Words to the novel appear on screen, as background music continues, and you begin to read. As Sommer twists her foot and falls, the lasers pace your reading and insert a sound-effect—the thud of a body falling, the hiss of breath knocked from Sommer’s throat. The dogs bay more excitedly. A man’s heavy footsteps can be heard tromping through the brush behind the reader, and a startled mewling cry escapes Sommer’s throat. . . .

Welcome to the future of reading, where text, images, sounds and music forge a collage. That’s the vision I have that led me to become a co-founder of East India Press.

The technology to do this already exists. The use of heads-up displays in fighter jets was pioneered in the 1960s, and that technology has now gone public. Though readers now are using the iPad2 and the Kindle Fire, I’m looking forward to the devices we’ll have five years from now, or ten years.

How can reading technology be better than with current books?

We don’t want to replace reading. We don’t want to make movies. Reading often engages the audience’s imagination in ways that movies fail to. We want to keep it that way. We want the reader to be a partner with us in bringing a tale to life. At the same time, we hope to ‘enhance,’ the story, help readers become more fully involved with it, yet keep budgets reasonable. With film clips, animations, illustrations, background music, and sound effects, we can create something that fuses a lot of

storytelling tools.

Creating e-books has become cheap and easy. This year, it is estimated that three million people will be putting their own e-books up for sale. That’s a staggering number. If you spend twelve hours a day just examining those titles, and spend only ten seconds studying each e-book put up this year, you wouldn’t be able to glance at even 1/100th of all the books that will be published—much less read one!

Readers are being deluged, often with books that aren’t any good. Most of those books, unfortunately, wouldn’t have made it past an editor. The author just wasn’t ready. Sure, there will be a few diamonds among all of that coal, but no editor will have time to sort through it.

I've had my share of sorting through manuscripts. For nearly a decade I was the first judge for one of the world’s largest writing contests. A funny story, once an editor of a major publisher asked me to help pick a book to give the “big publicity push to” for the next year. I read through thirty books and selected a book that the marketers thought was “too-long” for its intended audience. I pointed out that the book was also written several grade levels too high for its intended audience. But it was a great book, so I urged them to push it despite the book’s apparent problems. It was called Harry Potter.

Even though authors can publish their own works, we’re going to need editors in the future who understand how to green-light a novel, who can recognize what will please an audience. But once a work is selected, the editor will take the role of a producer—assembling a creative team of composers, musicians, illustrators, animators, directors, sound-effects engineers, and so on.”

Distributing enhanced books won’t be expensive. After all, it will be done electronically. There are no copies to print, ship, or store. But creating them will be expensive and time-consuming.

Still, it will be a lot less expensive than making a movie. To create a really great movie with a lot of special effects can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it will only give the viewer an hour or two of entertainment. But by meshing technologies, we can create a similar experience with novels, spending

perhaps only a hundred thousand or two—and it will give a reading experience that might last for twenty or thirty hours or more! Novels have a unique ability to let us achieve deep penetration into the minds and emotions of a character, much more so than with a film. I’m excited about the possibilities.

In fact, I am so excited about the possibilities that I went indie with this next novel. I didn't have to by any means. I'm an award-winning New York Times bestseller. Instead, I decided to start my own publishing company for enhanced novels. I see potential. Nightingale is the first young adult novel I’ve written, outside of a little work with Star Wars and the Mummy. I knew it could be a hit, but I wanted to do something . . . unique with it. I've trained dozens of other #1 international bestsellers, people like Brandon Sanderson and Stephenie Meyer, and I've learned to spot “good,” whether it's someone else's work or my own. Nightingale has it.

Now that it’s done, this is a first step toward creating a more-engaging form of novel, the kind that kids who are reluctant readers might devour. I’m looking forward to see what we can do in ten or twenty years. But Nightingale is a step toward that future.

Nightingale is the story of a young man, abandoned at birth, rejected from foster home after foster home. People see that he’s brilliant and talented, but also “strange.” He’s the ultimate loner until he meets Olivia, a marvelously gifted teacher, who recognizes that Bron is something special, something that her people call a “Nightingale,” a creature not quite human.

I was excited to see how it would be received. I was even more excited when the first reviewer said, “I devoured the novel. It was absolutely incredible! . . . I struggled to explain just how much I enjoyed it in my review. . . . After reading Nightingale, I don't think I will even be able to go back to reading regular e-books again. Like it says in my review, reading the enhanced Nightingale felt like an ‘experience.’ It didn't feel quite like a book or a movie. It initiated all of my senses. . . . enhanced ebooks are actually a real deal.” That's what we were hoping people would see in it. The future of books is beginning now.

Best of all, East India Press has created a new web simulation technology that mimics how the book appears on the iPad, so you can see and hear it for yourself for free at www.nightingalenovel.com.

Thanks so much for doing this guest post David.

I've had a little sneak peak at the new Nightingale enhanced novel and it is pretty awesome, it's such a new experience which I think is great to the publishing and book blogging world.