Interview With Maggie Stiefvater + Shiver Winner!

So, I've just counted up the entries for the Shiver contest. But, first, the author of Shiver, Maggie Stiefvater took time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions!


Where did you get the inspiration for your series?

Well, both of my series have far different genesis stories. Here’s the one for SHIVER: http://fantasticbookreview.blogspot.com/2009/08/author-interview-maggie-stiefvater.html

Do you listen to music while you write?

Always. I am easily distracted and always think about the cookie dough I could be making and eating or the laundry that needs to be done or the emails that need to be answered if I don’t have music on. I construct very tight playlists for each novel; they all adhere closely to a very specific mood so that every time I put that playlist on, I’m instantly transported into that novel again.

What's your most effective way to get through writers block?

Writer’s block is your subconscious telling you that you’re headed a wrong way. For me, I delete every word since I started feeling stuck -- sometimes 10,000 words at a time. If it’s a lot, I’ll paste it into a file called “outtakes” so that I can feel like it’s still there if I want it. But I never go back for those lost words . . . probably because they are crap.

For me, writer’s block always happens when a) I try to make characters do something to forward the plot that’s not in their personality, b) I haven’t been reading much fiction in my spare time and c) if I haven’t gotten enough sleep.

Which one of your characters would you say is most like you?

There is a character that IS me, but I’m not telling who it is. I will say it is not Grace or Deirdre. :D

Anything else to add?

God bless librarians.


Thank you again Maggie! And now, for the winner of my ARC of Shiver. There were 68 people entered, and 180 entries total. But the only winner is.....

Parajunkee

Congratulations Parajunkee! I'm off to email you now. Thank you so much to everyone that entered! Don't forget to enter my giveaway for Explorer X-Alpha.

Contest: ARC of Shiver

Contest is now closed.

So, if any of you have read my review of Shiver, then you'll know how much I loved it. Although I didn't put this in my review, it's probably one of my favorite books. It took a lot of thinking but I finally decided to hold a contest for my gently used ARC of Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater that I won from The Story Siren, and ask for the hardcover for Christmas.

What Shiver is about:

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

Just fill out this form to enter:



Edit: Two comments so far have asked if this contest is international, and since I loved this book so much and want to share its greatness, and since I love my followers SO much, this contest IS international!

Contest ends December 2nd.

Good luck everybody!

A Book Rant: Linger Name Change

In case you didn't know, Linger is the sequel to Shiver, both by the wonderful Maggie Stiefvater. And, again, if you didn't know (why are you so out of the loop?) I loved Shiver. When I read about this on Alex and Lauren's blog, A Flight of Minds, I was outraged. Confused. Very, very angry. It's...well, read this for yourself, it was written by Maggie herself:


"The more observant of my readers on my Livejournal blog have noticed that the main character from SHIVER has changed names. This is sort of eerie, since I hadn't realized I'd babbled about them enough to realize the names weren't the same, but the fact is, it's true. Sam Roth (which is, for the record, the best name ever) the character from SHIVER who becomes a wolf for the winter, is now Lee Spence.

That sentence, my friends, is the result of 16 hours of baby name book searching, thousands of calories of cookie dough consumption, silent raging, not silent raging, denial, googling, and finally, acceptance.

Because this agony is something that other authors will probably have to go through and because it gives me an excuse to look at a photo of Lee Pace, I'm going to tell my sordid little naming story here.

So. This all started way back when my werewolf story was only a twinkle in my eye. I'd had the dream that sort of laid down the premise, but only two of the characters (neither of them main characters) came with names in the dream. (And one of the two names in the dream was "Robert de Niro" so I had to change it anyway). I can't start writing a novel until I have the Perfect Names for my main characters, so I was in the brainstorming phase. I wanted something sort of timeless, soft-sounding, and inherently sad and emotastic. Which brought me to Sam, partially because of the way that Meg Ryan said, "Oh, Sam," in Addicted to Love, after she's torn his heart into little tiny pieces and feels bad about it, but is stuck in the floor, so she can't do anything but watch from afar and say:

"Oh, Sam."

I just thought . . . whooo, shivers. I imagined the scene where Grace, the other main character, first sees him as a person after years of obsessing over him as a wolf. And when she asks his name, he says, "Sam." And I knew that was it.

Except it wasn't. Because there is this author y'all may have heard of, Stephenie Meyer, who apparently has also written about werewolves. Who knew?That's sarcasm.

Anyway. So apparently, she also had a wolf character named Sam. Who knew?

That's not sarcasm.

I'd read TWILIGHT, but it's been a few years, so I'd completely forgotten that there was a werewolf named Sam in it. And my editors had too. And my crit partners. And basically all of the folks that had worked on the novel since last fall when I first began writing it. But not someone at the Scholastic sales meeting. And not, my editors reasoned (once they had this brought to their attention), the hoards of passionate TWILIGHT fans who had the demographics of every TWILIGHT character stenciled onto their arms with glittery pink ink. Sorry, sparkly. Sparkly pink ink. So at the very end of the editing process, after I'd lived with my characters as Sam and Grace my editors said that "Sam" had to go.

I sputtered and begged and pleaded and finally googled "sam werewolf," where I was greeted by one gagillion hits to Team Jacob and Sam Uley, The First Werewolf Named Sam. And I hung my sad head in defeat, because my editors were right, as they often are. Which meant that my favorite bit of dialog in the entire novel had to completely change:

"Grace,” I said, very softly. “Say something.”
“Sam,” she said, and I crushed her to me.

This was when the silent raging began. Because I knew I had to do something, but I didn't want to. I still had a sequel to write, after all, and I was going to have to live with a not-Sam for another 95,000 words. It wasn't just SHIVER that was riding on this name change, it was the fate of the sequel, LINGER (probably LINGER), as well, and probably my entire sanity as well. My critique partner, Tessa Gratton, spent about 8 hours IMing me back and forth, sifting through hundreds of names, looking for the perfect replacement that would ellicit the same emotional response in me as "Sam."

The catalog copy deadline was, I should add, bearing down on us at this moment, giving us about two days to come up with a replacement. At that point, I think my mood was best classified as "angry/ morose drunk."

Examples of angry/morose drunk exchanges? This is sort of a montage of conversations that occured on Day Two of the Great Name Debacle.

DAVID (editor) to me and ABBY (other editor): How about Daniel? I've always been partial to Daniel.

ABBY to me and DAVID: Daniel is nice.

ME to TESSA: Daniel! Daniel!? Why do they keep saying Daniel to me in my hour of need? Have they not heard Elton John?

TESSA: There, there. How about Jonah? It sounds emotastic.

ME to my DAD: I need something other than Sam, even though Sam is the most perfect name invented.

DAD: Why, again? Because there's this other sampire in TWILIGHT?

ME: Werewolf.

DAD: But 'sampire' is funnier. How about Jack?

ME: Why was I ever born?

Eventually, I really buckled down, hit the stacks, and finally came back to the first name that had occured to me at the beginning of the Great Name Debacle: Lee. It was soft, reminded me of blue jeans, inherently emotastic, and moreover, was the name of the actor who I think of when I think of what Sam/ Lee looks like: Lee Pace. (cue audience reaction: awwww). So now I had Lee Roth. Like Kate Winslet's character at the end of Titanic, I was sad, but triumphant. I told my art critique partners about the name change.

One of them, my friend Nicole, said, "um, Maggie, have you, um, googled 'Lee Roth'?"

I did.

Those of you who were born slightly before me will probably already know what I found. Sigh. So, with a nod to irritating rockers who have ruined a generation of fictional "Roths", I changed his last name to Spence.

So there you have it. The story of how Sam Roth became Lee Spence and everyone lived happily ever after. And the other day, I actually said "Lee and Grace" all by myself, without accidentally saying "Sa-Lee" first. So maybe there is hope for me yet. "


NO! There may be hope for Maggie, but there is absolutely no hope for me. First of all, who cares if there's a Sam in The Twilight Saga who just so happens to be a werewolf? Not me. I honestly hadn't even thought about that while reading Shiver. I don't understand why her editors are making her change her name. I could sorta understand if she was still writing Shiver...but it's already published. And they're not going to republish it- pull each book off the shelves and replace it with the "Lee Spence" version, are they? They just expect us to be able to transition like that?

Secondly, I don't love Lee Spence, I love Sam Roth. They are different people. Why? Because they have different names, therefore they are different people. I have no idea if I will be able to change this frame of mind. Ever. The whole situation is...inconceivable. (Holy crap, I spelled that right!) Maybe when I get Linger I can buy my own copy and scribble out Lee and write Sam...it may take awhile...it's an interesting idea though....

I am a Twilight fan. It is my favorite series. But, the whole idea that they're changing the name of a main character just because fans are that obsessive is ridiculous. They should just get it in their head that coincidences happen, and that not everybody is copy-catting Stephenie Meyer.

Oh, and by the way, I just typed in "werewolf Sam" on Google, and nothing for Twilight came up. There was True Blood, there was Shiver, there was no Twilight (on the first page, at least).

Sigh. Now I'm sad.

Edit: Wow, I feel like a nerd. OK, after I posted this it was brought to my attention that Sam Roth is here to stay. Maggie posted what you just read above on her blog, and then left a comment of the same post saying Sam is Sam again. See it for yourself here. Thanks to Rerebs from Count Rebula's Concepts & Comments. Like I said, I feel like a nerd.

...But it's still stupid to even think of doing that.

Shiver Review

Release Date: August 1, 2009
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Age Group: 14+
Pages: 390 (Hardcover)

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

---------------------------------------------------------------

This book was great. Yes, all those raving reviews you've read about it are valid. That's really all there is to it. I think I could end this review right now, but I want to continue raving about it, so I'll go on.

The plot in itself is really original-well, not the werewolf part, but how they "shift", and the entire take on werewolves. Although it's low on action until the last 90 pages or so, it keeps you reading religiously; fueled by romance, a little mystery, and an excellent storyline.

The characters are wonderful. Grace isn't the "normal girl" in most teen fiction, she's more logical, level-headed, and relatable than lots of protagonists. And Sam was more creative, afraid, and sensitive then most guy characters. The only character that annoyed me was Jack-obviously, and Olivia a little bit too. I was only annoyed with Beck until he explained himself.

Grace and Sam's romance is amazing. They're so sweet. At first I thought that they were moving too fast for only knowing each other for a short amount of time, but then I realized that they had shared a connection, an unbreakable bond for six years. And that definitely shows.

I think the writing was one of the things that made this book so great. OK, here is what I meant when I said it was taking me a long time to read it in a good way: The writing is so beautiful and poetic that I'd have to re-read sentenses to make sure I understood it correctly, or sometimes just to savor it's beauty. It was that good.

Overall, a great book! I can't think about anything negative to say about it except that the next book doesn't come out unitl 2010! I was very satisfied with the ending-but I want Linger, the next book, in what is supposed to be a series. And I want it now. I want to be sucked back into Maggie Stiefvater's wondeful world of werewolves now. Trust me, go read it this very moment.

Was it better than Blood and Chocolate? Oh yeah. This is, without a doubt in my mind, the best completely werewolf dedicated book I've ever read.

What Would You Do For Catching Fire?

(Sorry it's so small.)


3. MORE. DAYS. UNTIL. CATCHING. FIRE. I'M. EXCITED. (In case you couldn't tell.)

And, on a different note, I'm more than halfway through Shiver. It's taking me longer than I'd expected to read, but in a really good way... I'll explain exactly what that means in the review.


Oh, and while I'm being random, it's the perfect time to announce my brand-new award from Sarbear at My Life Is An Effing Fairy Tale (an awesome blog name, in my opinion)! Thanks Sarbear!

I have to pass the award on to some fellow bloggers. If I gave it to you and you already have it, sorry. I nominate:

1. Writer's Block Reviews
2. Poisoned Rationality
3. I Was A Teenage Book Geek
4. Read Now, Sleep Later (It's where I got the Catching Fire comic.((see above)
5. The Neverending shelf

Thanks again to Sarbear!


And now I'm off to continue being dead-tired. (8 is early for me.)

Teaser Tuesdays (August 25th, '09)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should

Be Reading.

Anyone can play along, do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's mine:

"And then I jumped from my chair, my notes fluttering to the floor like listless birds. I left them where they fell and ran for my car."

From page 48 of Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (I'm only on, like, page 50 to my dismay.)

Books I'll Pule For! (2)

These are all unreleased books that I would pule to get. Dictionay.com describes pule as: "to cry in a thin voice; whine; whimper."



*SPOILERS FOR THOSE THAT HAVEN'T READ THE HUNGER GAMES*
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.
















For Nora Grey, romance was not part of the plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how much her best friend, Vee, pushes them at her. Not until Patch came along.

With his easy smile and eyes that seem to see inside her, Nora is drawn to him against her better judgment.

But after a series of terrifying encounters, Nora's not sure who to trust. Patch seems to be everywhere she is, and to know more about her than her closest friends. She can't decide whether she should fall into his arms or run and hide. And when she tries to seek some answers, she finds herself near a truth that is way more unsettling than anything Patch makes her feel.

For Nora is right in the middle of an ancient battle between the immortal and those that have fallen - and, when it comes to choosing sides, the wrong choice will cost her life.







(No description yet. Evernight and Stargazer were great, so I can't wait to read Hourglass!)



























For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

There’s something about the new guy at Crossroads High . . .
Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside him:
• One can time-travel.
• One can raise the dead.
• One can tell the future.
• And one can possess another human.
With no other family and a life spent in and out of institutions, Aden and the souls have become friends. But now, they’re causing him all kinds of trouble. Like, he’ll blink and suddenly he’s a younger Aden, reliving the past. One wrong move, and he’ll change the future. Or, he’ll walk past a total stranger and know how and when she’s going to die. He’s so over it. All he wants is peace. And then he meets a girl who quiets the voices. Well, for as long as he’s with her. Why? Mary Ann Gray is his total opposite. He’s a loner; she has friends. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks; she tries to make everyone happy. And while he attracts the paranormal, she repels it. For her sake, he should stay away. But it’s too late. . .

Somehow, they share an inexplicable bond of friendship. A bond about to be tested by a werewolf shape-shifter who wants Mary Ann for his own and a vampire princess Aden can’t resist. Two romances, both forbidden. . . doomed. Still, the four will enter a dark underworld of intrigue and danger. . . but not everyone will come out alive. . .



All of these books look fantastic, don't they? For a complete list, check out my wishlist on my sidebar.