YA Book Releases
The Wicked and Just by J. Anderson Coats
Released on: 17th April 2012
The Springsweet by Saundra Mitchell
Released on: 17th April 2012
The Last Echo by Kimberly Derting
Released on: 17th April 2012
Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz
Released on: 17th April 2012
Released on: 17th April 2012
Book World News
It was a big week for J.K. Rowling and Potter fans alike. Firstly, the much anticipated Pottermore site went live for the general public.
“Many more Potter fans old and new will now be able to explore, discover and share the stories in a completely new way. At Pottermore.com, they will be able to join Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, get sorted into one of the four houses, and have a wand choose them, before starting a journey through the storylines of these extraordinary books and discovering exclusive new writing from J.K. Rowling.”
J.K Rowling’s new, adult book had its name announced this week as well.
News is also out that Rowling has begun work on a Harry Potter Charity Encyclopedia.
“For a long time I have been promising an encyclopaedia of Harry’s world, and I have started work on this now – some of it forms the new content in Pottermore,” she explained. “It is likely to be a time-consuming job, but when finished I shall donate all royalties to charity.”
Stephen King is working on a new horror novel, Joyland.
According to a Sunday Times profile by Neil Gaiman, King is working on a novel called Joyland, which sounds sounds like it’ll be a return to the pure horror genre.
Exciting news for fantasy fans of McAffrey’s Dragonflight Series. David Hayton is developing it into a movie!
McCaffrey herself also seems enthusiastic about the idea: “The fans and I have been waiting, not so patiently, for a long time to see Pern and her characters on the big screen. I couldn’t be more thrilled that a writer with David’s tremendous creativity and track record of translating beloved source material into fantastic movies has decided to make this his next epic adventure.”
Book Cover Reveals
Dark Companion by Marta Acosta
Revealed on: Kimba the Caffeinated Book ReviewsExpected Publication Date: July 3 2012
When foster teen Jane Williams is invited to attend elite Birch Grove Academy for Girls and escape her violent urban neighborhood, she thinks the offer is too good to be true. She’s even offered her own living quarters, the groundskeeper’s cottage in the center of the birch grove.
Something’s not quite right about the school — or is it Jane? She thinks she sees things in the birch grove at night. She’s also beginning to suspect that the elegant headmistress and her sons are hiding secrets. Lucky is the gorgeous, golden son who is especially attentive to Jane, and Jack is the sardonic puzzling brother.
The school with its talented teachers and bright students is a dream for a science and math geek like Jane. She also loves her new friends, including hilarious poetry-spouting rich girl, Mary Violet. But the longer Jane stays at Birch Grove, the more questions she has about the disappearance of another scholarship girl and a missing faculty member.
Jane discovers one secret about Birch Grove, which only leads to more mysteries. What is she willing to sacrifice in order to stay at this school…and be bound to Birch Grove forever?
Two and Twenty Dark Tales: Dark Retellings of Mother Goose Rhymes by Anthology
Revealed on: The Story SirenExpected Publication Date: October 16 2012
Nursery rhymes sung sweetly can take us back to childhood. But deep inside many of those childhood favorites is… a hint of something dark. TWO AND TWENTY DARK TALES: Dark Retellings of Mother Goose Rhymes imagines dark and sinister things amuck in Mother Goose-land. From familiar rhymes, to some of the more obscure, TWO AND TWENTY DARK TALES is a must read for anyone who enjoyed Mother Goose rhymes as a child, but has come to love the darkest of tales.
Taste by Kate Evangelista
Revealed on: The Book GoddessExpected Publication Date: April 16 2012
At Barinkoff Academy, there’s only one rule: no students on campus after curfew. Phoenix McKay soon finds out why when she is left behind at sunset. A group calling themselves night students threaten to taste her flesh until she is saved by a mysterious, alluring boy. With his pale skin, dark eyes, and mesmerizing voice, Demitri is both irresistible and impenetrable. He warns her to stay away from his dangerous world of flesh eaters. Unfortunately, the gorgeous and playful Luka has other plans.
When Phoenix is caught between her physical and her emotional attraction, she becomes the keeper of a deadly secret that will rock the foundations of an ancient civilization living beneath Barinkoff Academy. Phoenix doesn’t realize until it is too late that the closer she gets to both Demitri and Luka the more she is plunging them all into a centuries old feud.
Scandalous Scandals
So an author melts down in the comments section of this review. It is in response to a commenter who read the first 35 paragraphs of their novel and was unimpressed.
The author writes a blog post claiming to “pawn” (sic) him and claiming that he is a nitwit, buffoon, bully and telling him to fuck off. She contests his claim that he read the first chapter – admitting that while the link on her own site refers to it as the first chapter, there’s only four paragraphs. Which seems like a disingenuous claim because the commenter actually read 35 paragraphs.
She goes on to tweet comments about running him over.
Then, and I want to assure you all that I am NOT joking or exaggerating in any way, the author creates and tries to sell t-shirts about this person.
We actually have to stop and admire that if you’re going to go on a ranting spree of insanity – do it with style. The author does actually do that and we do take a moment to salute the badassery involved. Even if it is highly inappropriate and wrong… which we completely condemn. Still. Tshirts, man!
Apparently these were for sale. Cuddlebuggery was too lazy to personally verify that information, but based on everything else we’re going to go out on a limb and believe it’s true.
The author does finally apologize in a blogpost here. It should be noted that in the instances of bad public behaviour, an apology is appreciated. However, we do take issue with statements like this:
“I no longer feel the post itself serves a purpose even though I was told by a few at the time that it was a “a good post and that they were glad I put it up” going on to say that I’d said what needed to be said. But since they’re nowhere to be found now, I retract my words.”
These weaken an apology and its effect. When the reason for deleting a post and apologizing is because you have lost support – that negates the point of an apology and brings into question any true repentance or understanding of why the reaction was so wrong in the first place.
But still. TSHIRTS!
Another author wrote a blog post regarding negative reviews. It is in response to this Amazon review.
“There’s something that’s been bothering me for quite a while. And, finally, I have grown the cajones to address it. It’s about reviews. No, wait… it’s about BAD reviews. No, wait… it’s about bad reviews from NOBODIES. And by nobodies, I mean people who aren’t qualified to be a professional reviewer. They don’t have any special qualifications or education or job that automatically makes their opinion any better or worse than anybody else’s opinion. Personally, (because I’m one of those nobodies) I don’t hand out bad reviews.”
“I guess what finally pushed me to this blathering here about bad reviews from people who aren’t qualified to actually review anything is a review I got on Amazon.”
“It was so personal that I’m actually wondering if my ex didn’t write it.”
For those that didn’t click the above link to the review, this is the entirety of it:
“I did not enjoy this book at all. It was very poorly written and made zero sense about 99% of the time. New facts were introduced late in the book to help explain the extremely odd behavior of the characters. This was not a romance but rather the adventures of two disturbed human beings. Skip it and save your money. “
So either it’s been changed, or I feel the author’s use of the term personal is a gross exaggeration. So are other claims.
“I looked up all the reviews by the nameless, hateful, ugly reviewer and found that one and two stars are her specialty and she LOVES to slam lesfic. I mean, SLAM. Sure, she loved one book or maybe two, but mostly she got her rocks off on seeing just how hateful she could be.”
A cursory look into the reviewer’s profile does not actually reflect this statement at all. Because if it did that would be cause for concern.
Fact: the reviewer has two frequently used tags. The first is “excellent” and the other is “lesbian romance”.
The reviewer in question has thirteen reviews that span since 2008. Of these they have written four five star reviews, one four star review, one three star review, six two star reviews, and one one star review. I would scarcely call one and two star reviews their specialty. I wouldn’t even call REVIEWING their specialty given the scarcity of their reviews.
The author latter commented to criticism to say the following:
“Did you read the rest of the comments on this blog? Some people say it so much better than I did. I truly didn’t mean it the way you took it, but I can understand how it was taken that way. I may have not communicated my thoughts/feelings properly.”
That is a fair comment. Perhaps she didn’t mean it the way we are reading it, but a case could be made that it is exceptionally easy to take it that way. And that it is a stretch of the imagination to say this review was a personal attack and that the reviewer slams lesfic. In fact, that seems like a personal attack in and of itself.
Kat Kennedy
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