so after much thought i’ve decided to move my active blog over onto tumblr. while wordpress and its text-friendly format has served me well over the last eighteen months, it’s been getting harder and harder to find the time and energy to write up proper posts. tumblr–with its emphasis on visuals and its ease in reblogging to share genius material–is now a much better fit for me. and on the days when i can fit in some extra writing time, tumblr does offer the capacity for original blog posts.
this website won’t be going anywhere. all my contact info here is still current, the doc for ARC requests will continue to be forwarded to my publisher until noted otherwise, and all my old blog posts will remain archived and accessible. only new blog posts from this point onward will be changing sites.
so please find me at elsiechapmanauthor.tumblr.com. i’ll be updating any book news over there, reblogging some pretty cool stuff, as well as fresh blogging as often as i can.
thank you so much for reading and hope to see you all there!
so these two covers i’m about to go on about? i absolutely fell in love with them as soon as i saw them. i think they are both so unique and fresh and eye-catching. especially for YA covers, which sometimes seem to play it on the safe side due to keeping with trends.
natalie whipple is a fellow friday the thirteener and my good friend, and i was already super excited to read TRANSPARENT, anyway. and now that i’ve seen her amazing cover (no easy feat for her publisher’s design team, considering her teenaged MC is invisible!), the wait for her debut is going to be even harder! i love the vibrant neon colourway the artist chose to use, as well as the cool unfilled title font which ties in so perfectly with TRANSPARENT’s invisibility factor! all of it just meshes so well together, and it’s both vivid and balanced. natalie, huge congratulations on the face they gave your book baby because it. is. awesome!
amy tintera is a fellow lucky 13 as well as a great writer friend. her YA debut REBOOT sounds damn incredible and i’m counting down the days until i can get my hands on it! in the meantime, i’m just going to have to squeal over REBOOT’s incredible cover. so many reasons why i love it–the cold starkness, the classic red and black colour combo, the clever way they pulled down the 178 from the barcode. but the main reason is, i think, how it verges on being a cover you might expect for adult fiction. i’m a big fan of adult fiction covers that have the potential to be timeless, which–for me–usually means something font-driven, without much else in terms of visuals. classy, classy, classy. amy, your cover is fantastic!
TRANSPARENT will be published may 21st, 2013 (harperteen), and REBOOT may 7th, 2013 (harperteen). and whoa, may is my birthday month! i know what i’ll be buying for myself to read!
also, eARCs of DUALED went back up on netgalley and edelweiss yesterday. for all the reviewers and bloggers who have been requesting my book, thank you so much. it’s made the first page of most requested ARCs. i couldn’t believe it. i have no clue how long it’s going to stay that way, but really, really cool. THANK YOU.
fellow YA author and writer friend mindy mcginnis (NOT A DROP TO DRINK) asked me to participate in a blog hop this week. the theme is “the next big thing” in terms of what we’re writing, but DIVIDED just feels too far away to be able to talk about it much. so i’m going to answer the ten questions with DUALED in mind and hope you guys can pretend as well as i can that this is all shiny and brand new!
next week, five other authors will be taking part in “the next big thing.” i’ll have links to their blogs posted below!
1) What is the working title of your book?
DUALED
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
My son asked me about everyone having doubles, and what if we all just never knew about them. It lit the fire, so to speak.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
Dystopian, with a touch of sci-fi.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I don’t know, but they would definitely have to be of mixed ethnicity. I do like Andrew Garfield and his hair, though, and Ellen Page is cool. Plus she’s Canadian.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
I’m going to cheat and use a version of my tagline: Two of you exist; only one can survive.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I’m repped by The Chudney Agency, and DUALED will be published by Random House Children’s Books.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Five weeks.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I’ve seen it marketed as The Hunger Games crossed with Matched. I’ll throw in Lisbeth Salander from The Millenium Series, with a touch of Jason Bourne, if you like.
9) Who or What inspired you to write this book?
No one knew I was writing, so it was more just pushing myself to see if I could actually finish one from beginning to end.
10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
That West is just as capable of messing up as anyone.
thanks for reading, you guys! make sure to check out the following blogs of some fellow writer friends for their take on “the next big thing.” their post date for week 22 is october 31st–hallowe’en!
my super-talented daughter drew this for me the other day. i put it on the fridge to remind me how lucky i am that my working days aren’t that much different. i get to work in pjs, blast music, and tumble when i feel like my head’s going to explode from needing a break.
first off, thanks so very much to those who entered my giveaway for DUALED bookmarks! whether you commented here or tweeted/RTed on twitter, it was an awesome show of support, and i couldn’t have been happier with how it turned out! THANK YOU.
also, my thanks to my friend ellen oh for reminding me to get my DUALED countdown widget up! see it over there on the sidebar? i’m both excited and terrified whenever i see it!
with so many entries and lots to be happy about, i decided to randomly pick twenty winners instead of ten! so if you see your name below, please email me at elsie.chapman.author@gmail with your shipping address and i’ll send out your five signed DUALED bookmarks asap.
Yahong Chi
Jessica Piazza
Lenore Appelhans
Laura Moss (@LauraJMoss)
Debz (@DebzBookshelf)
Lena Marsteller (@LenaMarsteller)
Cindy Thomas (@CindyisWriting)
Nicole Andrea
Michelle Rosenfield (@MichelleRoRo)
Liz (MidnightBloom)@midnightbloom04
YOU GUYS! they turned out pretty awesome, don’t you think?
to celebrate getting these goodies AND the fact that it’s only FIVE months until DUALED is released (cue panicky hyperventilation here), i’m giving away some bookmarks! and i’m going to sign them, even though the idea that someone might actually want my signature marking up their stuff is very, very…odd. absolutely flattering and humbling and so very cool but, yes, odd!
so there will be TEN winners! each winner will receive five signed bookmarks, enough to keep, share, or host a modest giveaway of your own, if you like. random.org will be used to draw the names of the winners at midnight tonight, pst, tuesday september 26th.
THREE ways to enter:
1) BLOG COMMENT: a comment with your name on this post will count as one entry.
2) TWEET: if you’re on twitter, a tweetout or RT about this giveaway will count as two entries. please include a link to this post in your tweet and mention @elsiechapman so i can track the entries afterward.
PLUS:
BONUS ENTRIES just to keep things interesting!
each correct answer to either of the following questions will get you another five entries! i’ve blogged and tweeted about both quite a bit in the last few weeks (really, i couldn’t shut up), so they’re not hard to find. answers can be left via comment here or tweeted to me!
what is my new favourite band? what movie have i been dying to see?
and that’s it! limit one entry per method/question per person, up to a max of thirteen (of course!) entries each. winners will be posted on my blog sometime next week, so make sure to check back! thank you so much for being excited to read DUALED and for entering! GOOD LUCK!
***DUALED bookmarks giveaway is now closed. thank you so much for all the entries, you guys! please check back on the blog sometime next week when i’ll be posting the names of the winners!***
we got wind of this new japanese bread machine, the GOPAN, last year. it still makes basic wheat bread, along with all the doughs, etc, if you’re just wanting a standard bread machine. but what makes the GOPAN great is that it will also take RAW rice, grind it for you, and make it into rice bread.
soooo, yeah. it sounded amazing! needless to say, we really wanted it. but because it’s only available in japan (or ebay, if you don’t mind the insane mark up, plus shipping on top of that), it wasn’t until this past summer when we visited japan that we got to pick one up ourselves.
we got ours at the giant yodobashi in akihabara, a building with six floors dedicated to electronic goodness (though my favourite floor is the seventh, which houses not only tower records but also the yurindo bookstore; the entire eighth is made up of restaurants). what proved super handy was the shipping centre in the basement floor! though be warned there is no boat service, only air, which meant shipping–while quick–was far from cheap.
the floor display for the GOPAN.
there used to be a red model, but only the white is available now.
the buttons have no english at all. good thing the genius husband was up for translating what he could, using the kana he already knows and going online for the kanji.
we also had to order a step-down transformer to make the GOPAN compatible with north american voltage.
it comes with over 200 recipes–not only for different types of bread depending on the type of rice being used, but by adding additional ingredients, you can make green tea bread, chocolate bread, coffee bread, etc. oh, and salami bread.
the crib sheet, with the required steps translated from japanese to english.
the full instructions. they’re very similar to those of standard bread machines available here in north america.
we’ve been using kokuho rose brand sushi rice for years, and it’s available in most grocery stores.
the necessary ingredients for the basic rice bread recipe: rice, water, gluten, sugar, salt, yeast, shortening.
the all-important machinery and measuring bits. the little basket holds the gluten and yeast and releases automatically at just the right time.
the rice goes in first. measuring of the rice and water requires a kitchen scale, as they are done by weight.
the main case with the rice, water, shortening, salt, and sugar.
the little basket with the gluten and yeast.
like standard bread machines, the case just drops into the main compartment. the little basket fits into a slot in the door.
it takes four hours to make a loaf of rice bread. the grinding of the raw grains definitely gets a bit loud, but nothing you can’t sleep through, as we’ve used the timer option for fresh bread in the morning.
it’s a smaller sized loaf than the wheat bread our standard bread machine makes. i think it’s a half pound loaf.
rice bread! it’s supposed to be a bit sweeter than wheat bread, but apparently i have no taste buds because i can’t tell the difference. but having given up wheat last year, i loooove the GOPAN. it also has a gluten-free recipe, makes fresh mochi (we’ve tried, we ate, it’s awesome!), and fresh udon noodles, as well!
so to celebrate the release of fellow YA author jeanne ryan’s debut NERVE, us thirteeners got challenged to a blog to blog dare by her group blog, emu’s debuts. fellow thirteener ellen oh and i put together a parody movie trailer, fifty shades of twilight. apart from providing production value (is that what they call it when you do the props and “doll positioning”?), this really is all due to ellen’s brilliant editing. enjoy the rest of our dares, too! what’s really cool is that the whole fiasco got a mention over at publisher’s weekly!
now, twitter. such a serious time suck, but i still love it. because i’ve met some of the best people on there. smart, funny, nice people. who actually read books on a regular basis and don’t think it’s really that weird to want to buy a rolling library ladder to reach the top of your bookshelves. and reading aside, we connect on lots of other levels, too.
for example, louisse who wrote YA inspired haikus during english class. she came up with this for DUALED from the blurb alone. which means i fully expect a nice, long poem when she finally gets to read the book.
and then there’s lena, for saying i’m one of her top ten bookish people she wants to meet! apparently, i am doing pretty well at pulling off this “intelligence” thing.
so isabelle’s post about how DUALED is one of those ARCs she’d sock the pope for made me laugh. her comment about the quality of my tweets made me laugh even harder. i don’t know what i might have been tweeting about. a slight chance it wasn’t about food.
thanks for the love, you guys!
i’m a proud member of the YAkuza. we need badges, jon! you can find DUALED on lee and low’s list of diverse dystopias.
also, an interview i did for nikki over at fiction freak, and for criss over at fantasybooks! thanks for having me, guys!
so, about that tagline for DUALED. if you’ve seen pics of the cover or actually have a physical ARC, you’ll note the tagline on the front cover is this:
you or your alt?
only one will survive.
there’s been a lot of love for this tagline; i love it, my publisher loves it, bloggers and readers thus far seem to love it, too.
but sometimes that’s not enough. especially when it comes to book buyers–the guys who decide what to buy to sell in their stores. and while the word “alt” makes perfect sense within the context of DUALED’s plot, for someone who doesn’t know the plot, it’s been decided the word falls on the vague side.
to be honest, i was a bit disappointed at the idea of losing the tagline. but the thing is, just like the guys in charge of cover art know what works and doesn’t work for a jacket, buyers know a helluva a lot more than me when it comes to stuff like this. and taglines? it’s incredibly hard to come up with one that’s succinct, memorable, fitting–and having to fit within tight space constraints at the same time, too. so to the team at random house children’s books who came up with not only one great tagline but two? you guys are brilliant. the new tagline that will be on the covers of the finished copies:
two of you exist.
only one will survive.
i think it’s absolutely perfect. thanks so very much to those who worked on coming up with it!
also, i found out that voice actress alicyn packard will be narrating DUALED for the audio edition! we’ve talked on twitter and she’s just lovely and talented and i cannot wait to hear the finished product. i know there was an audition process to find the perfect voice for west, and i think she is going to be fantastic!
randomness: oh, this band. so where have i been that i’ve missed ONE OK ROCK this whole time? discovering a band whose music i instantly fall in love with is, for me, the same as picking up a book by an author i’ve never read before and being unable to stop myself from getting sucked into the world within its pages. my heart actually beats a little faster, i get all giddy, and i just want to leave real life for a bit and explore whatever crazy goodness they’ve created. and these single-take videos will always amaze me!
so because i had quite a few manga pics leftover from my previous post covering our multiple trips to bookstores in tokyo, i hope you guys don’t mind seeing some more.
i already miss visiting the bookstores. i miss how freaking huge some of them were, and the sheer volume of books able to be packed under one roof. i miss the amazing array of manga available, from shonen to shoujo, josei to seinen. i miss being able to simply walk into a bookstore and then discovering yet another mangaka whose story in the form of artwork simply blows me away.
the latest weekly manga anthologies. that one right in the middle, the one with the cover with the red-haired dude on it? it’s the september issue of jump SQ magazine featuring new KENSHIN material from original mangaka nobuhiro watsuki. am very, very much wishing i’d picked that issue up while i had the chance.
YOTSUBA! yay! one of my kids’ favourite manga. after seeing it move from publisher to publisher here (from adv to yen press), it’s good to see it still getting lots of love in japan.
a set of ai yazawa’s TENSHI NANKA JA NAI in novel form.
we’ve been collecting BAKUMAN, the latest series by the same author of DEATH NOTE. it’s meta manga, in that the manga series is about mangaka writing manga. a lot of it applies to the publishing industry over here, in terms of author and editor relationships, how ideas come about, writing for the market vs writing for the heart…it’s an interesting manga to read just for that.
because manga is usually sold wrapped and sealed, sample chapters are provided for browsing.
ONE PIECE is huge in japan. i think it’s at volume 67 so far and still going. these side books–PHILOSOPHY OF ONE PIECE, THE HEART OF ONE PIECE, etc–are awesome additions for hardcore fans.
i think these are reissues of osamu tezuka’s original ASTRO BOY manga, all boxed up and nicely packaged.
PANDORA HEARTS by jun mochizuki is another huge shonen manga in japan, published in tankubon form by square enix, the same folks who brought us KINGDOM HEARTS (!!!). it’s licensed in north america and published here by yen press.
yorindo bookstore in the yodabashi building in akihabara.
lots of framed artwork to go along with the manga displays.
more popular ongoing series. most of the newest volumes of currently running series are shelved flat, while older volumes are stacked vertically.
a floor display featuring miyazaki’s NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND.
tsutaya in shibuya. the whole seventh floor is dedicated to manga.
a wall of “staff recommended picks” at tsutaya.
this is just one wall of the three dedicated to shoujo. it was amazing.
TIGER & BUNNY is everywhere in japan, with anime and films and manga. in this case, the manga is actually based on the original anime.
with walls dedicated to boy love manga, it’s only fair that some shelf space be dedicated to yuri–girl on girl.
a pic of hiro kiyohara’s manga adaptation of ANOTHER, the horror novel by yukito ayatsuji. it’s been licensed by yen press for north america.
the tagline is A CHINESE WIFE AND AN OTAKU HUSBAND. you guys, this is our life in manga form! we both laughed pretty hard at seeing this.
some more KENSHIN manga on display to promote the release of the live action movie back on the 25th of august. this is the aizoban edition, the collector’s edition. the spines line up to form an image of kenshin’s sakabato.
bunkoban editions of the KENSHIN manga. these editions of the manga make up the new boxed set.
i had to pick up volume 1 of the collector’s edition of KENSHIN. after this trip, we have four different editions of this one volume, in two different languages.
colour pages inside!
yep, gorgeous, gorgeous colour pages.
because i’m already fangirling hard enough over a movie that i won’t be able to watch for many, many months (that it’s been licensed in over 60 countries is good news for a north american deal, but a theatrical release here would most likely still take a long time to be finalized), i have to share this KENSHIN tumblr site. it’s terribly addicting. and ONE OK ROCK‘s the beginning–the lead single written just for the movie–has been happily playing on repeat.
