About the Author: Polly Holyoke has been imagining stories since she was in fifth grade. When she isn’t writing, Polly loves reading, camping, skiing, scuba diving and hiking in the desert (where she quite stupidly got herself bitten by a rattlesnake). She lives with three rescue dogs, two spoiled cats and a nice husband who is tolerant about the piles of books all over their house. She thinks the best part about being an author is going to work in her sweatpants and getting paid for daydreaming!

About The Neptune Project: Nere Hanson and her teen companions are shocked to learn they have been genetically altered by their desperate parents to live in the sea. Protected by her loyal dolphins, shy Nere leads the rest on a perilous journey to her father’s new colony. Fighting off government divers, sharks and giant squid, can Nere and her companions learn to trust each before their dangerous new world destroys them?

Today we have an abbreviated Twitterview with Polly! 

Pitch your book in 140 characters:
When the sea has become humankind’s last hope, a group of genetically altered teens fights to survive beneath the waves.

Who will this book appeal to:
I hope MG girls and boys who enjoy adventure stories will love TNP. Cuz there’s some romance, I think some Y/A readers will pick it up, too.

Favorite moment or character in your book:
It’s hard to choose a single favorite character, but I love one of the dolphins. Densil is steady, loyal and kind, and a very good listener!

What’s your writing routine:
First thing in AM I take my hot tea upstairs, light a candle and dig in. If I get stuck, I skip to another part of the story or take a walk.

What’s your best piece of writing advice:
When you sit down at your computer, only read the last paragraph you wrote and steam forward from there. AND KEEP YOUR BUTT IN THE CHAIR!

What’s been the most surprising part of the publishing journey:
That me, a history major, is writing and selling a marine science fiction series. I never thought I’d spend hours each summer watching Shark Week!

What did you do when you learned your book would be published?
I stood for a minute taking deep breaths. Then I gave out a big whoop and started calling/texting EVERYONE. Didn’t stop smiling for hours!

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve received?
Don’t feel like you have to begin a book by writing Chapter One. Just listen to the characters talking in your head and start with a scene. BTW it’s normal for writers to have characters talking in their heads!

What are your top three favorite books:
THE BLUE SWORD by Robin McKinley ARCHANANGEL by Sharon Shinn and FRECKLES by Gene Stratton Porter is a sweet, romantic classic.

What’s next for you?
Just turned in Neptune 2. Hope they’ll want Neptune 3! Then I have a couple of MG and Y/A fantasy and historicals I hope my agent can sell.

Find out more about The Neptune Project on Goodreads. 

About the Author: Liesl Shurtliff writes middle-grade fantasy and likes hot cocoa, fairy tales, yoga, and slippers (fuzzy ones and glass ones.) She lives with her family in Chicago, where harsh winters are wasted on flat land.

About RUMP: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin: In a Kingdom where a name is your destiny, twelve-year-old Rump is the butt of everyone’s joke, until one day he discovers he can spin straw into gold. Glittery magical gold. Soon Rump discovers that there might be more to his name and destiny than anyone thought.

Pitch your book in 140 characters: 
RUMP is Rumpelstiltskin cast as a sweet and innocent hero in a kingdom where a name is your destiny. Rump’s destiny stinks. Spinning gold doesn’t seem to help much.

Who will this book appeal to: 
Kids (boys and girls) ages 8+ and anyone of any age who loves fairy tales and a quirky sense of humor.

Favorite moment or character in your book: 
My favorite characters are the trolls, and my favorite moment is when Rump gets captured by the trolls.

What’s your writing routine: 
Tell everyone to leave me alone and lock myself in a hole for as long as possible. It is so hard, especially with an adorable 3-year-old whose favorite thing is to “sneak.”

What’s your best piece of writing advice: 
Give. Don’t focus so much on getting ideas or getting inspiration or getting more done. Just give what you already have.

What’s been the most surprising part of the publishing journey: 
That people besides my mother actually want to read my book. Actually I’m not sure my mother cares all that much. That’s surprising too.

What did you do when you learned your book would be published: 
I was in the middle of a move, so I unpacked boxes in 100 degree heat, but I smiled real big while I was doing it.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve received: 
“Don’t listen to advice. Not even mine.” —Karen Cushman

What are your top three favorite books: 
3 is a very small number. Ella Enchanted, Jane Eyre, and Jacob Have I Loved. I have eclectic tastes and tomorrow the list will be different.

What’s next for you: 
I cannot see the future, but I hope another MG fairy tale. I’m also working on a YA novel that is very different from my MG stuff.

Find out more about Rump on Goodreads. 

About the Author: Tara Sullivan was born in India and spent her childhood living in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic with her parents who were international aid workers. To research Golden Boy, Tara traveled to Tanzania where she interviewed those working to rescue and educate Tanzanian people with albinism. She currently teaches High School Spanish and lives in Malden, Massachusetts. Golden Boy is her first novel.


About Golden Boy: A shocking human rights tragedy brought to light in a story of heartbreak and triumph, Golden Boy tells the story of thirteen-year-old Habo, an albino boy growing up in Tanzania. Always marginalized due to his difference, Habo discovers it’s more dangerous to be seen as priceless than worthless when his family moves to Mwanza and he must flee for his life from people who think his body parts are magical. But fleeing is only the beginning of a journey where Habo must discover his true worth.



Rather than a Twitterview, Tara decided to do a post based on one of my many possible questions. Her question was:  If you’re visually inspired, talk about where you find your sources of inspiration? What movies or pictures most represent your novel or left an impact on you while writing?


I am a VERY visual person. So it only makes sense that, when writing Golden Boy, images played a key role in every step of the process.


Though Golden Boy is fictional, it’s a story based off of a horrifying current reality: the murder and mutilation of people with albinism in Tanzania. As such, the images that propelled me to start, and kept me writing were real ones: the gruesome footage of documentaries; the haunting stares captured by photojournalists; the smiling faces of rescued children on NGO websites.


As I wrote, I kept a collage of images that spoke to me posted above my desk: pictures of the settings that I found online, and images of people who were displaying the emotions I needed to draw on when I was writing.


Once I had written a first draft I traveled to Tanzania and traced the path of the story. In every location I tried to soak in the smells and the sounds and took thousands of digital pictures. When I got home, those pictures (coupled with my copious notes on things like the color of the dust and my hand-drawn street maps) were what allowed me to attack revision with a new fervor.


When I got my editorial letter and my editor asked for a deepening of my secondary characters, I hit a brick wall until it occurred to me to find pictures of them and do a writing exercise where I wrote each of their stories. Looking at their faces (evocative faces found on Google images) was what finally allowed me to understand how they would react in a story where they didn’t see themselves as “secondary,” and therefore write them more fully.


My final visual for Golden Boy is my amazing cover art by Jesse Joshua Watson. We discussed various aspects of the cover through a series of his sketches and I ended up with the stunning cover you see on the book: one that perfectly captures Habo’s sensitivity as well as his wariness. I couldn’t be happier with this, the final image my book will be judged by.


Thanks for reading and, if you’d like to see some of the footage and photos that inspired me for yourself, please head on over to my blog: http://sullivanstories.com and click on the “Resources for Teachers” tab. Under “Albinism in Tanzania,” you’ll find the media that inspired me for Golden Boy. Under the “Golden Boy,” tab you can see Jesse Joshua Watson’s powerful cover art and, scattered around the rest of it, you can find the pictures I took while traveling to Tanzania.

Find out more about Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy on Goodreads. 

About the Author: Debra Driza is a member of the YA lit blogging group the Bookanistas and a former physical therapist who finds torturing her characters infinitely more enjoyable. She’s particularly fond of sweets, all that is random, and teen TV, and is pretty sure she wasn’t built in a computer science lab based on her inability to find her keys and master the common calender. These days you can find her at her (messy) home in California, wrangling one husband, two kids, and an assortment of Rhodesian Ridgebacks (all of which are varying degrees of naughty). MILA 2.0 is her first novel.

About MILA 2.0: Mila was living with her mother in a small Minnesota town when she discovered she was also living a lie. She was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was never supposed to remember the past–that she was built in a computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

Now she has no choice but to run–from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. Evading her enemies won’t help Mila escape the cruel reality of what she is and cope with everything she has had to leave behind. However, what she’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and that just might save her life.

We have an abbreviated Twitterview with Debra to share! 

Who will this book appeal to:  
Androids!  But hopefully also humans of the male and female variety. There’s romance, car chases, butt kicking–something for everyone!

Favorite moment or character in your book: 
I love Mila of course, but I have a real soft spot for Lucas, who shows up later in the book. Geek powers, activate!

What’s your writing routine: 
Routine? I’m supposed to have a writing routine? CURSES–I knew I was doing something wrong!  I often write at Starbucks–does that count?

What’s your best piece of writing advice:  
Never, EVER give up. The only way to fail at writing is to quit.

What’s been the most surprising part of the publishing journey:  
All of it—from getting an agent, to getting a book deal, to meeting so many amazing authors. It’s been a wild ride so far!

What did you do when you learned your book would be published:  
I shouted something completely unintelligible, like “ARFRIHSS!”  Then I tried really hard not to have a heart attack, bc that would be bad.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve received:  
Keep reading and keep writing—the more you write, the more you’ll improve.

What are your top three favorite books: 
EEK, the dreaded fave book ? This changes a lot, but for this moment–Brideshead Revisited, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and The Hunger Games.

What’s next for you: 
Finishing up revisions on book two, then on to book three. I also have an idea for a new book that I’m really excited about working on, too!

Find out more about Mila 2.0 on Goodreads. 

I’m so excited to have Justina Ireland for today’s Class 2K13 post (which is a Twitterview). I’ve known Justina for a few years now, since we were both on the same Cybils panel back in late 2010, reading so many books in a short period of time. Justina’s also guest posted here before — she’s talked about her favorite contemporary novels as part of our first Contemporary YA week. 

About the Author: Justina Ireland enjoys dark chocolate, dark humor, and is not too proud to admit that she’s still afraid of the dark. She lives with her husband, kid, and dog in Pennsylvania. Visit her at www.justinaireland.com. 

About Vengeance Bound:  Cory Graff is not alone in her head. Bound to a deal of desperation, Cory’s mind houses the Furies—the hawk and the serpent—lingering always, waiting for her to satisfy their bloodlust. By day, she lives a normal life, but by night, she tracks down targets the Furies send her way. Cory’s perfected her system of survival, but when she meets a boy named Niko at her newest school she can’t figure out how she feels about him. Does this mean that Cory’s finally found someone she can trust, or are there greater factors at work? As Cory’s mind becomes a battlefield, with the Furies fighting for control, Cory will have to put everything on the line to hold on to what she’s worked so hard to build.

Pitch your book in 140 characters:  
A girl who is possessed by the Furies must learn to balance their urge to kill with normal life. It’s a love story. With killing.

Who will this book appeal to: 
People that like girls who kick ass and new spins on Greek mythology. And cake.  And fictional violence. Because who doesn’t like cake?

Favorite moment or character in your book: 
There’s a scene at a party where someone gets their comeuppance. I love that scene like Gaga loves weird.

What’s your writing routine:  
Every night, after dinner.  It’s only an hour or so, but it’s the best hour of my day next to reading a bedtime story with my kiddo.

What’s your best piece of writing advice: 
Stick with it. Read everything, write what you want to read, but most importantly, don’t give up. Motivation is the key to success.

What’s been the most surprising part of the publishing journey: 
How many times I’ve had to read my story. Seriously, it’s amazing I still like writing.

What did you do when you learned your book would be published:  
I listened to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” on repeat until my husband started crying and begged for the nightmare to end.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve received:  
Ignore the market. If you want to write about singing Broadway vampires, write about them. No one knows what the next big thing will be.

What are your top three favorite books:  
I don’t really have a favorite book. I’m not a big re-reader. But I dig anything by Mo Willems.  The Elephant and Piggy books crack me up.

Find out more about Justina Ireland’s Vengeance Bound on Goodreads.