STACKED

books

This Week at Book Riot

|

book riot

 

 

Over at Book Riot this week, a few posts:

 

 

 

 

This was the last week for the donation drive to get Some Girls Are into the hands of teens at West Ashley High School. I spent the bulk of Wednesday packing them up and making various supply runs across town to make sure they were boxed up and taped up well for mailing. Thanks to your incredible generosity for the donations, as well as the incredible support you showed in helping me pay for postage. I’ve made one trip to the post office already and plan two more to mail out the 30 (!!!) boxes of books. My goal, once these are all shipped out, is to take the 830 copies we received as donations and make it a round 1,000 copies. Here’s a look at all of the boxes, for the curious. I cannot wait to see Andria’s photos when she’s giving the books to the kids:

 

30 boxes

Giveaway: From Where I Watch You by Shannon Grogan

|

Back in 2010 — even typing that makes me realize how that was a long time ago! — I joined a critique group. I had plans to work on a novel, and even though none of those manuscripts will ever see the light of day, being a part of this group taught me a lot about critiquing, about writing, and about my own writing process (and that I was totally not ready to write a novel then).

One of the girls in that group I bonded with pretty quickly was Shannon Grogan. And one of the first things I read was her manuscript for what would eventually become From Where I Watch You. She worked on this novel for years and years, and it was so neat to see it go from idea to a work in progress to a manuscript to now, a fully published novel. It was thrilling to see her dream come to fruition, and it was thrilled to be a part of this process in terms of offering feedback and insight along the way.

It was an honor to help her rework that first chapter to perfection as she queried agents and then to be able to see her be offered representation from multiple agents. When her book was sold to Soho, I had a feeling it would be in really great hands. Soho has been doing really great stuff with their teen lines.

Now that From Where I Watch You is out and on shelves, I wanted to talk a little bit about it here on STACKED. I obviously can’t review it, but it’s the kind of book I think so many teen readers will love. It’s an edgier mystery about a girl who has a dream of getting out and away from the ghosts that haunt her, from the death of her sister to her mother who has turned into a holy roller to the mysterious notes that keep popping up. Her way out is through a baking competition. This could help her land her dream and get her the money she needs to pursue her future on her own terms.

In a lot of ways, Shannon’s book reminds me of Trish Doller’s books, particularly in her writing and style. The voices here are very teen and teen readers will see themselves in the story, even if they haven’t even been in this situation.

Here’s the full description of From Where I Watch You:

Sixteen-year-old Kara McKinley is about to realize her dream of becoming a professional baker. Beautifully designed and piped, her cookies are masterpieces, but also her ticket out of rainy Seattle—if she wins the upcoming national baking competition and its scholarship prize to culinary school in California. Kara can no longer stand the home where her family lived, laughed, and ultimately imploded after her mean-spirited big sister Kellen died in a drowning accident. Kara’s dad has since fled, and her mom has turned from a high-powered attorney into a nutty holy-rolling Christian fundamentalist peddling “Soul Soup” in the family café. All Kara has left are memories of better times.

But the past holds many secrets, and they come to light as Kara faces a secret terror. Someone is leaving her handwritten notes. Someone who knows exactly where she is and what’s she’s doing. As they lead her to piece together the events that preceded Kellen’s terrible, life-changing betrayal years before, she starts to catch glimpses of her dead sister: an unwelcome ghost in filthy Ugg boots. If Kara doesn’t figure out who her stalker is, and soon, she could lose everything. Her chance of escape. The boy she’s beginning to love and trust. Even her life.


To celebrate the publication of Shannon’s book, as well as to get the word out about the book a little further, I wanted to give away two copies of the book to STACKED readers. This one is for US residents, and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the month.



Read a Romance Month

|

I just learned last week that August is Read a Romance Month! If you know my reading habits, you know that I’ve been reading romances no matter the month’s designation. (That website is chock-full of awesome posts from romance authors, I highly recommend checking it out.) I had planned on doing a romance round-up this week, but I decided that first, I’d dedicate a post to speaking briefly about how much richer my reading life has become thanks to romance.

I’ve always read romances. When I was a teen, I wouldn’t pick up a book unless I was pretty sure there was some kissing in it (this started my habit of skipping to the end), even if that storyline wasn’t the main one. Even now I prefer at least a little romance in my books, though it’s no longer a strict requirement (and it’s less of a preference for the YA I read).

It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago, though, that I really started to embrace being a romance-reader, when I finally came to the realization that one of the main reasons romance as a genre is so disparaged is because of how female-centric it is. Women are its primary readers and its primary writers (not to mention most of the protagonists are women). The books are written by people like me for people like me, and that is the reason they’re looked down upon. They’re seen as wish-fulfillment for bored women (They’re not! They’re just as well-written, engaging, and meaningful as any other sort of book out there). But here’s the thing: I can name a dozen critically-acclaimed, award-winning books that are clearly wish-fulfillment for straight white men without thinking too hard about it. The idea that romances are “unrealistic” implies that other genres (i.e. those written by and for men) are realistic, which is laughable. I could go on and on – and others have, much more eloquently. Tessa Dare, for example:

women are constantly told

Once I realized all of this, I got angry about it. And I stopped being embarrassed about liking romance.

The increase in the amount of romance I’ve read within the past few years has led me to pay more attention to the romance-writing world. I follow a few of my favorite authors on Twitter and through them, I’ve come to learn that the romance publishing world’s problems mirror a lot of those in YA (and publishing in general). I’ve learned about the We Need Diverse Romance movement, which sprang from the more general We Need Diverse Books initiative. I learned about the RITA finalist For Such a Time and through that, how the RITA awards work (and how a genre that celebrates women can also take a decidedly opposite tack when it comes to other marginalized groups).

I’ve learned about self-publishing and how to pick the good ones, and now some of my favorite romances are self-published ones. I read a lot more novellas and short stories. I read a lot more e-books, too! I wouldn’t touch any of that just a few years ago, and now it’s not uncommon for me to open up a self-published (edited and vetted) romance novella on my phone for my evening reading.

Reading romance has absolutely strengthened my feminism and helped fortify my talking points. I’ve learned how to better stand up not just for the genre, but also for anything that women like and participate in, and by extension, women themselves. I’ve been able to bolster my arguments in support of romance, but have ultimately discovered that the best argument is no argument at all – it’s simply telling the other person to Grow Up.

Welcome To The New STACKED!

|

STACKED_–_books

 

 

If you’re reading us from a feed reader, hop on over to our main site and take a look at the brand new design and set-up we’re got at STACKED.

After six and a half years, we decided it was time to get a new look. Kim and I had been talking about doing this for years, but we never took the leap. We recently discovered a huge problem with being hosted on Blogger — one we’re not at liberty to talk about but was a security and safety issue — and that made us choose now to change. We’ve gone to being self-hosted at WordPress and underwent a custom redesign with Designer Blogs. We could not be happier with the look or with the entire process of working with Erika and the team at Designer Blogs. STACKED is now cleaner, easier to read, and modern without being too cute or too white and hard on the eyes. We’re also huge fans of the new logo.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working to update our drop-down menus to ensure that our stuff is much easier to find and navigate than it was before. There will be hiccups throughout. We know some images and links and spacing got muddied a bit while the change happened, but we’ll be working to fix it over the next month or so.

Our goal is to make navigating STACKED much simpler and cleaner. We want to make it so people who want a book list can find a book list without a problem. We are making it easy to find posts on specific topics, and we’re working to streamline our labeling system and to pull out some backlist gems we know are ripe for revisiting. Since we’re now on WordPress, we know images are a little trickier to work with, so we’ll be coming up with ways to improve the visual elements we so frequently write about, too.

Thanks for being STACKED readers, and we hope you enjoy the new look as much as we do.

Announcing: Part One of FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD Contributions

|

 

via the Creative Commons

Remember the time I sold an anthology of feminist essays to Algonquin Young Readers? It’s been a few months since I’ve talked about it here on STACKED, and that’s for good reason: I’ve been working on collecting the most dynamic, exciting, wide-ranging voices to contribute.

One of the goals of this collection is to have a solid group of essays, as well as art and comics. One of the other goals was to also reach out to “big name” and celebrities to get their voices into the collection, too. I won’t lie and say that part was easy, but I will say that has been one of the most enjoyable, eye-opening, and educational elements of putting together this collection. I have learned about negotiating on rights, among other things. Because some of these negotiations aren’t complete yet, I don’t feel comfortable sharing, but needless to say, I’m very excited by the “big” names who will be included in the collection.

But I’m not going to be a complete meanie in this post. I DO have a roster of contributors who have signed, sealed, and delivered contracts to me for inclusion in Feminism For The Real World. Curious who they might be?

I’m excited to share, in alphabetical order, the authors and artists who will be included in the anthology. Their pieces range in topic, in voice, in structure, and in approach, and the ones I have seen so far have blown me away. I cannot wait to see the whole of this come together, and more, I cannot wait for this collection to get into the hands of teenagers — especially teenage girls — in spring 2017.

I’ve linked to the websites or work of the contributors, so you can check out what they’ve been working on and what it was about their work, their voices, and their perspectives that made me want to include them:



Illustrators and Artists


It’s an honor to work with this roster of writers and artists. I’ve admired so much of their work and their insights, that being told “yes! I’m interested!” to contributing to my collection was nothing short of flattering.

 

This is my dream project, and I’ve learned so much so far, both from the contributors and my editors. I cannot wait to talk more about this as the project proceeds, but one thing that stands out to me is something I talked a bit about earlier this summer: the course I took in college as my capstone, where the final project was developing an anthology, has played a tremendous role in my thinking about this particular collection. But more — and maybe more importantly — it made me rethink some of the things I learned or analyzed in that particular class. Like in librarianship, you learn about ideals and perfect case scenarios in the classroom. You ask a lot of “why did they fail to do this or this or this?” in regards to imperfection in creation.
But the truth is, when you’re in the thick of things, when you’re actually on the ground making and doing, there are so many confounding factors that muddy the process. Nothing will ever be perfect; it can’t be. Instead, you make it the best thing you can make it, and you take pride in that. The process of asking myself questions, of asking questions of those who know better or who have more experience, has been enlightening and humbling.
I’m very proud of this so far, and I’m only going to be more thrilled as further pieces click into place. I cannot wait to see it all come together.