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/

You Need to Read ALL THE RAGE by Courtney Summers

I had not read a book by Courtney Summers before ALL THE RAGE, although I’ve been reading about her books for awhile now. Yes, an egregious omission. I know. But we writers have very long TBR lists and they got longer each year and so it is entirely possible to follow someone’s career and still not have actually read her books.

And then came my own FINDING PARIS, (spoiler alert here) and the story of sisters Leo and Paris, a very broken family and late in the novel reveal of sexual violence. A story about a girl who has trouble finding her voice to tell her truth and a sister whose own truths are lost in her fragile nature—a story and a mystery that looks like a larking road trip through Vegas on its surface, but is, like the characters, much more than that.

In that context, it was time for me to catch up with the books of Courtney Summers and to read ALL THE RAGE, which just released this April from St. Martins/Griffin.

Romy tells us right away in RAGE that something is wrong, that she had had too much to drink, that she went with a beautiful boy she’d been crushing on and that he raped her and hurt her and left her on the road.

In bits and pieces and flashbacks and flash forwards, we learn the rest of Romy’s story. That she had told. That the boy was the son of the sheriff in her small town. That she is the daughter of a man dismissed as a loser and a drunk. That her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend love her and want her to be happy and whole. That her own friends have turned against her. That she likes a new boy at work but isn’t quite sure what to do about that. That she uses her red lipstick and her red nail polish as armor against the world.

It’s a hard to book to read because awful things happen and keep happening. It’s an important book to read for these very same reasons. It is a story about rape culture and bullying and class prejudice, among many other things. Here’s how Amazon summarizes:

The sheriff's son, Kellan Turner, is not the golden boy everyone thinks he is, and Romy Grey knows that for a fact. Because no one wants to believe a girl from the wrong side of town, the truth about him has cost her everything--friends, family, and her community. Branded a liar and bullied relentlessly by a group of kids she used to hang out with, Romy's only refuge is the diner where she works outside of town. No one knows her name or her past there; she can finally be anonymous. But when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing after a party, and news of him assaulting another girl in a town close by gets out, Romy must decide whether she wants to fight or carry the burden of knowing more girls could get hurt if she doesn't speak up. Nobody believed her the first time--and they certainly won't now--but the cost of her silence might be more than she can bear.

With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, Courtney Summers' new novel All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women in a culture that refuses to protect them.

Obviously I want you to read FINDING PARIS. I want you to talk about FINDING PARIS. I want you to download the reader’s guide that the Harper Collins created, because it’s truly excellent.  http://www.scribd.com/doc/262768484/Book-Club-Guide-FINDING-PARIS

And then I want you to read ALL THE RAGE by Courtney Summers. A tough and beautiful book, just like its protagonist, Romy Grey.

I’ll be talking about other related titles in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

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

Five for Friday

Last Friday in March! Now that is madness. (okay, a weak pun that vaguely alludes to basketball. Best I can do today)

1. Getting very excited for HOUSTON TEEN BOOK CON, which is coming up on 4/11! Here's the link: http://www.teenbookcon.org  I am absolutely thrilled that FINDING PARIS will be available for sale there early and exclusively! So yes, if you are in Houston and want to read two weeks before everyone else, come to Houston Teen Book Con! I am also insanely, fan-girl ecstatic that I am on the Truth About Love panel with Alexis Bass, Susan Colasanti, David Levithan (!!), Jen Mathieu and me!

2. Getting equally excited for TLA the following week, which for the uninitiated, stands for Texas Library Association. I am very honored to announce that I will be signing FINDING PARIS in the author area on Wednesday 4/15 from 11-12, courtesy of Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins, but my other publisher, Soho Press, is generously providing some stacks of  SWEET DEAD LIFE series to sign as well! Now that makes me so happy. My full schedule will be up in appearances soon, and also includes TT4L and the Texas Author Tea.

3. It is finally spring here in Texas. At least more or less. Of course the pine pollen has coated the world in a dusting of yellow, but even that seems to be fading. *sneezes*

4. Very excited for the debut of Meredith Moore's I AM HER REVENGE on 4/7! Click on the title and get a copy and we can read together! She'll be debut launching at Blue Willow Books on 4/4!  (and fyi, Meredith and I will be signing together on 5/2 at Murder by the Book. More on that soon.)

5. And in my iZombie report, I can say that episode 2 has kept me coming back for episode 3. Rose McIver continues to nail it as Olivia. The writing is clever, although definitely hits every trope beloved to my have CW shows. Still giving it 2 brains up!

You Don't Have To Like Them and Other Truths About Characters and Storytelling

Just finished reading the very talented Julie Murphy's amazing debut YA novel, SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY. And here's the thing about her main character Alice: She is a mean girl. Getting cancer has not changed this; in fact dying has through much of the book, exacerbated her meanness. She is angry and cruel and her bucket list of revenge (it's not all revenge on the list, but a lot of it is) includes some very awful acts that she commits with pleasure. She loves a boy named Harvey but she fears--and rightfully so--that even though her disease is suddenly in remission, it will return, and so she pushes him away, cheats on his loving heart, uses him shamefully and with full knowledge of what she is doing and honestly has to think hard, once she tries to change her mindset, about what a non-mean person would do. The punishments she doles out to those who have wronged her (and let me say they've done some pretty crappy things) are as harsh if not harsher than the crimes they've committed.

I don't like her very much, not even at the end. I wouldn't be her friend. I have never understood the Regina Georges of the world. It rarely occurs to me to act in those ways and trust me when I say I'm no saint. I'm mouthy and snarky and sarcastic and I see the world through a sardonic lens most days and am happiest when surrounded by those who see it that way, too. But although I am myself a cancer survivor, I still don't relate to the way Alice acts, even if I can understand and analyze it. Almost dying--however close you get--changes you in ways you might never suspect it will. Trust me on this. Unless you've experienced it, you can't honestly say how you'd react. You really can't. It doesn't always make us noble. Even Gus and Hazel Grace in TFIOS--surely the prettiest, most articulate cancer-suffering duo in YA--have their awful moments. 

But I don't HAVE to like Alice for me to read and enjoy and savor this book. I don't HAVE to like her for me to think that Julie Murphy's written an awesome novel. I simply have to find her authentic and consistent within the fictional boundaries and character arc Murphy has created. And I do. (Okay, as someone who's spent a number of years in the classroom, I will say that my long term experience with high school is that there are fewer powerful student queen bee types in real life than there seem to be in fiction, but I'm okay with the trope. It's a decent stand in for the many nasty power mongers in the world. And interestingly, the place I see it most is the teacher's lounge, which is often a scary, angry, territorial den, a place where I was once told by someone in authority, "I don't care how smart you are as long as you're nice,"--implying that I wasn't-- but that's another story)

Still, I frequently read reviews of various books--including my own-- in which readers say, "I didn't like her/him." or "That was a terrible way to act." or "9th grade girls wouldn't swear like that." or "I would never do that to my sister. It made me hate her." And they down rate accordingly. 

Except my job as an author is NOT to make my characters all likeable. My job is to tell the authentic story of this character at this place and time in this particular set of experiences. My job is to ruminate on the nature of being human, which let's face it, is quite the journey. Some of us are awful. Some of us aren't. Some of us (even 9th grade girls!) swear like sailors. Some of us do terrible things and all of us have no idea how we would behave if our world was up-ended, or we were struggling or trapped in a life we didn't want but couldn't escape, one in which horrible things sometimes happened. If the truths we had to face felt, well, unfaceable. 

Writers are not obligated to tie it all up with a pretty pink bow, although I personally prefer a note of hope at the end, which Murphy has definitely supplied.

This means that my characters will frequently act or speak or think in ways I might not. And as a reader, I am thus privileged to safely experience worlds beyond my own limited personal experience.

 I'm hoping very hard that I have captured these things for my readers in the forthcoming FINDING PARIS (Balzer and Bray) and all its characters Leo and Paris and Max, as they struggle--not always in the best of ways-- to face their own choices and truths. 

Bravo, Julie Murphy, for being fearless enough to write a character that I don't like very much.

And if you haven't read SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY (Balzer and Bray), you need to do so.