In Which I Talk about MAGNIFICENT MYA TIBBS and Amazing Author Crystal Allen

Crystal Allen has written another amazing book with THE MAGNIFICENT MYA TIBBS, SPIRIT WEEK SHOWDOWN, out now from Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins. Mya is funny and big-hearted and spunky and sometimes wonderfully clueless to the truth about the people around her. MAGNIFICENT MYA is a story about many things: friendship and bullying and family and siblings and the goofiness of school Spirit Week. Mya learns that not all friends are true or even truthful and that gossip and rumors are hurtful and that sometimes the least likely suspects can become your truest friends once you really get to know them.

Like her other novels (HOW LAMAR’S BAD PRANK WON HIM A BUBBA-SIZED TROPHY (2011) and THE LAURA LINE (2013), MYA combines humor and heart as it navigates serious issues. Mya doesn’t know that her best friend Naomi has some huge ulterior motives for their friendship. She doesn’t know that “Mean” Connie Tate might not be so mean after all. Mya doesn’t know that she might not be the best sister on the planet right now to her brother Nugget. In short, Mya doesn’t know a lot of things and when she finds herself paired with Connie not Naomi as Spirit Week partners, everything Mya believes gets tossed away as she attempts to navigate through crisis after crisis.

Crystal Allen is a master of dialogue and of creating characters that stick in your mind and heart long after you’ve finished the story. Or to steal from Mya herself, Allen’s story-telling skills are boo-yang amazing!

As, by the way are her skills at teaching writing to reluctant readers, at putting herself out into the community and walking the walk of a writer who gives back to her readers. Like the characters she creates, she is inspiring and funny and generous. She knows how important it is to believe in yourself and your ability to create regardless of circumstance, and in full disclosure, she has frequently kicked her metaphor cowgirl boots into my metaphor butt to remind me of that.

An inspiring kind of lady, my friend Crystal Allen. I would totally be her Spirit Week partner!

So ka-clunk your cowgirl or cowboy boots to a bookstore and get your copy of MAGNIFICENT MYA right now!

 And check out this starred review of Mya on Kirkus Reviews! 

Texas Book Festival!

And the Labor Day Weekend starts with the ultra good news that I am part of the author line up at this year's Texas Book Festival in Austin! So excited, FINDING PARIS and I, both!!

For info and full author list, go HERE !

A Real Life View into FINDING PARIS and Leo's Las Vegas World!

When Leo and Max go searching for Leo's missing sister Paris, they find themselves on a scavenger hunt through Vegas and beyond. Here are some of the real views of where the journey takes them!

Fake Eiffel Tower at Paris Hotel!

Looking for notes from Paris! Do you see any?

Maybe she left a note up there!

When Max gets kicked out of the casino, here's what Leo sees.

More fake Eiffel Tower!

Of course since it's Vegas, there's a bar.

And oh! Is that the Bellagio across the street? Is Paris over there?

FINDING PARIS is out now from Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins!

Need some road trip survival tactics? #EPICREADS  and I created some based on FINDING PARIS!

http://www.epicreads.com/blog/road-trip-survival-tactics-from-finding-paris/

And One Month In, Some New Thoughts on FINDING PARIS

Mostly what happens after a book arrives, is that there's a flurry of activity and then you move on (or back, as the case may be) to whatever come next. In my case, I'm finishing up a third (and hopefully final) draft of IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS, which arrives next May from Soho Press. Publishing deadlines march on even if you're promoting something else and so for a few weeks it's like this wonderful but crazy madness as you try to balance telling people about the book that just arrived-- in this case, FINDING PARIS--while still keeping your head in the upcoming project and also doing whatever else it is you do in your life. So I've been writing, revising, teaching, prepping lectures, scheduling events and travel and book clubs and… well you get the picture.

But a month in, it's time to take stock and so I'm going to do that here this morning, or at least attempt to. My non-publishing friends will often ask, "So how's the book going?" and I'm never exactly sure what that means except that I think it means sales and then I have to tell them that while I sort of keep track, really, that's the publisher's area not mine and I don't have access to all the numbers and remember I don't sell them out of the back of my car. And then we look at each other awkwardly and talk about something else, like Hillary Clinton's run for the White House or why kale is so popular when everyone knows what it tastes like.

What I do pay attention to is this: I am OVERJOYED at how many wonderful people are seeing in FINDING PARIS the story I hoped they would see. You are telling me that you cried in the places I hoped you would cry and laughed in the places I hoped you would laugh and saw the down and dirty side of Vegas I hoped you would see. You ached for the secrets that characters have such trouble revealing and you understood that Paris HAS to send Leo away, has to force her to confront things that Leo does not want to confront. You are telling me that you see that this may look like a surface happy road trip/caper story but it's anything but that and you are telling me that you are HAPPY that the book surprised you, that the story is twister than you expected and to that I say THANK YOU! And YES!

It's different book than I've written before; it's sparer and leaner and it's really much more showing than telling and so I had to trust that my readers would look at what is being said and described and what is being not said and put the pieces together. Although (and I'm no longer worried about the spoiler aspect at this point, although if you are, please close your eyes or something) the reveal of sexual violence comes later in the novel, you, my lovely readers, are telling me that this just made you go back to the beginning and then you said, "OH! oh! oh!" And you saw! And this makes me so grateful. Because as I've said a few times since the book came out, I strongly believe that although we think that we tell the world everything with our endless posting on social media, the truth to me is that we don't. That the dark painful stuff is still hard or impossible to say and our images are important and we don't like to show need or weakness or ask for help because look at all those happy people out there smiling on their Instagram feeds. I should be that, right? How can I tell an awful secret that will change the way you look at me? So it's slow reveal that unfolds page after page but can't arrive until Leo is ready for it to, until she has no choice but to tell.

And another thing that was a surprise and a happy one? So many WONDERFUL librarians who are saying how much they love FINDING PARIS and comparing it to one of my favorite titles, PAPER TOWNS by John Green. This makes me delirious with joy! It honestly never occurred to me but yes, Leo and Paris have some journey in common with with Q and Margo -- not the plot but the essence and  so I am honored.

Anyway. It's Tuesday. I have a lot of work to do and a talk to give on setting.

More soon, including a review of DEVOTED, which is out today from Roaring Brook and is written by my dear friend Jennifer Mathieu who is such a talented writer and amazingly wonderful human and funnier than hell.

What We Need to Know: 5 Statistics About Sexual Abuse

Earlier this week, I was honored and honestly, ecstatic that Amanda MacGregor at SLJ's Teen Librarian Toolbox gave FINDING PARIS this glowing and very thoughtful review.

And I'm good with the spoilers if I say that this paragraph in particular made me happy:

"There is so much to discuss here—the family dynamics, the silence, the secrets, the distrust, the suspicion, the denial, the shame and more. Because of the late reveal about the sexual violence, it forces readers to rethink what they think they know about the story and the characters. It also makes readers think about what the future will hold for Leo. This is a great addition to the list of titles that discuss sexual violence."

Because, as I've talked about before on this blog and elsewhere, here's what I know to be true. Despite social media where we seemingly tell every detail of our lives in painstaking detail, the truth is, we really don't. Too often--for so many reasons--we keep the bad stuff a secret. We can't bear to tell or we are afraid or ashamed or we just don't have the words. Even now. Even today where we have a hashtag for every social change, every paradigm shift we hope to make. The world is still, as it always has been, a very dangerous place for women, and even more dangerous for young women. Not everyone lives in a safe family. Not everyone has parents who do the right thing. Bad things happen even when you do. And despite what we might want, we aren't always talking about it. Particularly teens. Particularly those  most vulnerable.

So it was important to me to write a book where once you got to the reveal, you had to think back to all you were being told and shown page after page but weren't processing. To all those moments you were thinking, where is this road trip going? What is Leo really showing us about Vegas and LA and her life and Paris?

Here are some sobering statistics, courtesy of RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual assault organization:

• 44% of sexual assault victims are under age 18
• 80% of sexual assault victims are under age 30
• Every 107 seconds another sexual assault occurs
• 68% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police
• 98% of rapists will never spend a day in jail

And that's just the beginning.

Organizations like RAINN  www.rainn.org are making a difference. 

YA novelists are making a difference too.

Of course one of the well-known examples is Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK.

I'll be talking about others on this blog during the coming weeks, including ALL THE RAGE by Courtney Summers, which is out now from St. Martin's Griffin.

Three for Tuesday

So much going on right now, but the Tuesday three shall be:

1. Happy surprise this morning with this review from a source I very much respect and thus I am totally honored and thrilled about what School Library Journal's Teen Librarian Toolbox had to say about FINDING PARIS:
http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2015/05/book-review-finding-paris-by-joy-preble/

Every author leaps for joy when a review totally GETS IT, totally understands what your novel is trying to do and how it's trying to do it. Makes my heart quite happy!!

Read the whole thing if you have a chance, but here's a snippet:

 "While this is a mystery and (less so) a romance, it is the much darker and more serious elements of the story that make this a hard book to put down and an even harder book to forget."

2. Just finished ALL THE RAGE by Courtney Summers, which is often a brutally emotional read, about a girl named Romy Grey, a small town, rape culture, recovery, bullying, and how hard it is for some people to believe the truth. As much - although not all-- of that is part of Finding Paris, I think they might someday make a fascinating companion read…

And also on the nightstand: Just started my precious arc of Julie Murphy's DUMPLIN' and I'm already swallowed up in WillowDean's world and hoping she gets the happily ever after I want for her.

Skimming through editor Cheryl Klein's SECOND SIGHT, because if anyone is a genius at breaking down plot, character, voice and revision techniques (besides my own wonderful editors), it's Cheryl Klein over at Scholastic!

And I'm a few pages in to THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins, which everyone is reading and now so am I! I'm sensing this is not going to be a happy read, but a fascinating one. 

3. And in my pop culture report, Jane has had her baby on last night's JANE THE VIRGIN, which if you haven't watched, you should totally catch up on this clever series. I'm newly addicted to CALL THE MIDWIFE, a BBC show that's been on for a few years now and why didn't anyone tell me?! Even the hubs is watching with me, having been primed and perhaps broken in by a few seasons of DOWNTON ABBEY. For now, as I have revisions to finish, let me just say "Chummy Noakes!" I am totally Team Chummy forever. On the Housewives front, Carole is having her fling on RHONY, Bethenny is back and feisty and understandably cranky with all the divorce shenanigans and I kinda like Dorinda, although she needs to dump the boyfriend. (Just saying). 

There's more of course, but like I say, there's writing to do and a talk I'm giving in June to write about setting and a new manuscript to get back to and so I leave you for now.

Coming soon: My interview with debut author Adam Silvera, about his forthcoming MORE HAPPY THAN NOT, out in June from our mutual publisher, Soho Press! 

Not the Sparkly Vegas: FINDING PARIS, Setting and Telling A Story at a Slant

In my newest YA,  FINDING PARIS (Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins), Leo and Paris begin the story in Las Vegas. Their entire lives, their mother has dragged them from place to place and guy to guy and dream to dream and now they find themselves in Vegas with Mom and the 'fresh start' stepfather. But it's not the pretty, sparkly Vegas. More the dark underbelly, the truth behind the fake stuff.

And that's the thing about setting this novel largely in Las Vegas: FINDING PARIS is a story about hiding and eventually finding the truth. It's about the things that happen to us that we can't or don't tell, the things that no one wants to hear, the things that once we've given them voice, we have to own and accept and that's often not only tough but heart-wrenchingly painful.

And Vegas, well, to me, the touristy part of Las Vegas hides the truth like that, too. As Leo's mother knows all too well, the casinos aren't built on winners. They're built on people losing, even though the glitz and shine and noise and eye candy of the slots and poker tables and roulette wheels and black jack tables would make us think otherwise. Casinos are these winding, cavernous places, designed for us to get lost and lose track of time. They bring us free drinks and entertain us and serve us gluttonous amounts of food and what's not happy about that, right? Leo points out to Max that there's a fake everything in Vegas: A fake Eiffel Tower and a fake New York and a fake Egyptian pyramid at the Luxor.

In a word, it's all a facade. It's not the real Paris. It's not the real Egypt. It's not the real anything.

But it's all so pretty, isn't it? We don't notice that we're going broke. We don't notice that really, the whole thing is making as many people sad as it is happy. Probably more people. 

I find it fascinating to think about the Luxor Hotel--where I once stayed-- and all its rooms angled and slanted to mimic that pyramid, so aggressively artificial--as artificial as the ingredients in the frozen yogurt that Leo sells at Yogiberry. But we tell ourselves it's healthy. And we tell ourselves that we'll win in Vegas.

So what better place to set a story where characters aren't telling their truths? Where one sister tries sends the other on what surfacely looks like a frivolous road trip, complete with the first clue taped with a Hello Kitty BandAid to a statue of Elvis? Where Leo meets a boy over a slice of pie and that boy works at a museum off the Strip that simulates an atomic explosion? Where what looks like fun, fun, fun, is actually masking something else? Where what Leo and Paris (who makes something pretty out of discarded bits and pieces with her jewelry) show you of their Vegas, of their house, of their life, is telling you all sorts of things that they both just can't say? Or rather, that they do say, that they do show you, but just in this slanted way.

Oh how I loved writing FINDING PARIS. I loved giving voice to Leo and Paris and Max, to their hopes and heartaches and painful truths.

Welcome to the World FINDING PARIS!!

It’s release day for FINDING PARIS!!

And so, some author facts for you, gentle readers!

FINDING PARIS is:

• Book number 6 for me!
• My first contemporary YA.
•  My first book with Harper Collins/Balzer and Bray
• An emotional family drama wrapped in a mystery, with a road trip center and a bit of romance.
• The book I first outlined at what a group of us Texas authors lovingly refer to as The Lodge of Death. I stopped writing to please someone else and out came the book I was supposed to be writing.
• A book with sparer prose than some of my others. So it felt a little like poetry to me, although it’s not verse. Every word had to count. Lots of showing. Much less telling.
• About the things we do for the people we love and the blind spots we have for those people
•  About how difficult it is to voice and own our truths.
• About the secrets that families have and about the strange, wonderful and sometimes painful sibling relationship.
• About broken families and girls whose voices need to be heard.
•  And about hope.

Among other things!

I’ll be talking about all this and more in various places including guest posts at Janet Fox’s blog; Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations; C.C. Hunter’s blog; various stops on a blog tour arranged by the awesome Jean Book Nerd, and a bunch of places in between.

Here’s the link to the blog tour: http://www.jeanbooknerd.com/2015/04/finding-paris-by-joy-preble.html

I hope you read and love FINDING PARIS. I’m very proud of all my books, but particularly proud of getting to this one at this time and this place in my career. It takes place in Vegas and points beyond and includes more than one Paris, but all of them devoid of anything authentically French. (Which is exactly the point. You’ll see.)

 If you’re in Houston, come join me at my launch party at Blue Willow Bookshop, Saturday, 4/25, at 2 PM.

http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/node/77664

And let’s all find our Paris. Whatever or wherever it might be!

One More Day!

 It's one day until FINDING PARIS pub day!!
Even though the book is not 'officially' out yet, I have:

• Signed at Houston Teen Book Con
• Signed at Texas Library Association
• Book-talked PARIS with awesome Texas librarians
• Book-talked PARIS with awesome Texas teen readers
• Signed a few at Houston SCBWI conference

And been crazy excited for 4/21/15!!

FINDING PARIS Blog Tour coming soon through Jean Book Nerd!

http://www.jeanbooknerd.com/2015/04/finding-paris-by-joy-preble.html

FINDING PARIS Houston Launch Party at Blue Willow Bookshop 4/25/15 at 2 PM!

http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/node/77664

Here are a few pics from TLA!

FINDING PARIS on the Harper Collins shelf!

signing! Aisle 7!

The YAHOUS go to TLA! (with Dotti Enderle, Jennifer Mathieu, Kim O'Brien )

with the every awesome Christina Diaz Gonzalez

And the ever clever Kari Holt

with the brilliant Julie Murphy, who shares our brilliant B&B editor with me

And authors Christina Mandelski and Amy Fellner Dominy (aka my partners in crime)

And lots more coming after that!

I'll have other things to say tomorrow, so stay tuned.

FINDING PARIS, coming 4/21/15 from Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins!!

YA SCAVENGER HUNT Plus EXCLUSIVE BONUS MATERIAL from N.K. TRAVER !!

SCAVENGER HUNT IS CLOSED!! NEXT ONE WILL BE IN THE FALL!

My Rafflecopter giveaway is still on until the end of Sunday.

EXTRA GIVEAWAY from JOY PREBLE!!

In honor of YA SCAVENGER HUNT, I am also giving away copies of my other books!!

You can win the complete DREAMING ANASTASIA trilogy or the complete SWEET DEAD LIFE duology (2 winners chosen, one for each prize) by entering my Rafflecopter giveaway below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway