Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

10 Questions For Anne Osterlund

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I don’t quite remember how I discovered Anne Osterlund, but I do know that I thought Aurelia was a rocking book, and thoroughly loved Academy 7. And interviewing her has been on my wish list for ages now. So, imagine my surprise when she emailed me, and asked if I wanted a copy of Exile (Which is out today! My review here). I jumped at the chance, and thankfully, she was able to take a few moments out from her teaching, writing, imagining, and cat-loving schedule to answer a few questions.

MF: I’ve always been curious how fantasy writers dream up their worlds. And since this book was about Aurelia discovering her country, what was the inspiration/germ for Tyralt?
AO: Tyralt is where Aurelia lives. It has always been very much as it is, in my head, at least since Robert informed me he was from the frontier in chapter 1. A country with a royal court and a frontier. A traditional monarchy and a modern education system. A vast distance between one corner of the kingdom and another. A history of tradition and a push for enlightenment. All of which lead toward . . . conflict. Which is a dynamic element within a story.

MF: Unlike Aurelia, and even though there’s adventure in it, Exile is more about an internal journey on Aurelia’s part. Why did you choose to go that route with this book?
AO: Aurelia’s journey begins in the first book, and all her actions stem from the discoveries she makes about herself and her family at the end of book one. Aurelia is about a defining and traumatic moment within her life, but it’s just that—a moment. The time span of the entire book extends for only the length of about a week and half. Exile covers a much longer period in time, allowing the characters to learn a great deal more about each other, the kingdom, and most importantly, themselves.

MF: Do you have a favorite character or scene in Exile?
AO: I’m not allowed to have favorite characters. It would start a war within my head. As for scenes, …hmm. I’m rather fond of all the frontier scenes. Probably because that is when Aurelia is the most happy. Though I love watching her and Robert fight during the first two chapters, which is rather hypocritical of me.

MF: What is the trickiest part about writing Exile?
AO: The forest. Or rather getting out of the forest. Aurelia, Robert, and I were stuck there forever This is largely Robert’s fault. He was too concerned about looking weak during the early drafts, which led to all kinds of revising, when what he really needed to do was just suck it up and let Aurelia rescue him. Though to be fair, this is also the part of the book where Aurelia has the worst time emotionally, and that is probably what really makes the forest the most difficult.

MF: The easiest?
AO: Again, the frontier scenes always read swiftly for me. I think because Aurelia enjoys herself so much while she’s there.

MF: Since you’ve written in both genres, what are the differences/similarities between writing fantasy and science fiction?
AO: LOL! That is a huge question. There are plenty of differences within writing genres (word choice and research being two of the greatest), but ultimately, in my opinion, any young adult novel comes down to knowing the characters. Aurelia, Academy 7, and Exile are all character driven. The settings and the worlds change, but the depiction of those worlds is always through the characters’ eyes. My books all star two teenagers (one guy/one girl), and those characters undergo the same challenges as any other teens. They have minds of their own. They make their own decisions and their own mistakes. They express an entire range of emotions. They get in trouble and change their minds and have the ability to grow. They don’t know everything. And they don’t know they don’t know everything. And there is always hope.

MF: You teach sixth grade, right? Does your teaching influence your writing? Why or why not?
AO: The greatest influence teaching has had on my writing career is via the school visit and presentation aspect. I have a great deal of experience setting a meaningful objective, getting my audience’s attention, and holding that attention for the duration of a lesson or presentation. Sixth graders do not tolerate boredom.

MF: Since you also have a full-time job, when do you find the time/space to write?
AO: I write all day every day I am not teaching or presenting. With the rare exception of family trips and major holidays.

MF: Do you have any special place you like writing?
AO: On the back of a half-wild stallion sprinting across the Tyralian frontier. Or in an interplanetary plane flipped upside down and scaling the side of a frozen waterfall. No, honestly I write on a couch, surrounded by papers, pencils, a thesaurus, and a dictionary. It doesn’t matter where you are when you write. It’s about where your imagination is.

MF: Who or what inspires you to write?
AO: The characters are the inspiration. Always the characters. I first met Aurelia, the heroine of Aurelia and Exile, several years ago, on a yellow notepad, when she was complaining about being stuck at a boring party with an itching ankle. Aerin from Academy 7 was removing a headband, standing in front of a mirror, and contemplating whether she could scrub away the past five years to become someone completely different. And Salva, the hero of my upcoming fourth book, was checking out the pretty girl at church. All of these characters required change. None of them could remain as they were. And change is the ultimate force within a story.
The first two scenes mentioned above are both posted on my website. Here for Aurelia and here for Aerin.

MF: What’s the last book you read and loved? And why did you love it?
AO: I just finished Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles, the second book in her Perfect Chemistry series. I’ve loved both these books because they pull the reader through the story. And also, I admit, because I’m always afraid they will turn out to be too much like my upcoming fourth book. And they never do.

MF: If you don’t mind telling us, what can we expect next from you?(More Aerin and Dane? Or more Aurelia and Robert? Or something completely different?)
AO: Salvation is a young adult contemporary novel scheduled for release next April. Here’s the pitch.

SALVA (Salvador) RESENDEZ is at god a Liberty High School. Quarterback. National Honor Society Member. ASB Vice President. His Mexican immigrant family has high expectations, and Salva is prepared to fulfill them—mostly—but what he really wants is to blend in with his friends and enjoy his senior year. A goal bound for destruction when an asinine requirement forces him into AP English with the teacher from hell. And with walking disaster area, BETH COURANT. Who may be his salvation. But what neither Salva nor Beth knows is that the cost of salvation is mortality.

I would love to write more about Aurelia, Robert, Aerin, and Dane! But Salvation is definitely the priority at them moment. Currently I’m wrestling my way through the first edited draft. And let me tell you, Salva definitely rivals Aurelia for stubbornness. Check out my second blog post if you don’t believe me.

MF: Thanks, Anne, for sharing your time!
AO: Thank you so much, Melissa! I hope you and your readers will come visit my website and my blog. And of course, I hope you all enjoy Aurelia and Robert’s expedition in Exile!

The Last King of Texas

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by Rick Riordan
ages: adult
First sentence: “Dr. David Mitchell waved me toward the dead professor’s chair.”
Support your local independent bookstore; buy it there!

My in-person book group is reading The Red Pyramid for their selection this month. Since I’ve long since devoured everything Riordan’s written for kids, and since I usually include the sentence “he’s also written a mystery series for adults but I’ve never read them” while talking about Riordan, I figured the least I could do is find out what the whole mystery series for adults is about.

Our erstwhile hero is Dr. Jackson Navarre, Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, also known as “Tres” (Spanish for three, not “Tray”; a mistake I was making). Tres is also a private investigator. In fact, that’s the reason he moved back to San Antonio, after years in the Bay Area. He’s offered a position at UTSA, in part because of his P.I. job: the man who had the position right before Tres ended up being shot to death in his house, after receiving several death threats via letter. Then, in the middle of the interview, a pipe bomb is delivered, exploding shortly thereafter. Of course Tres takes the job. It’s a series of twists and turns from there, as we explore the gritty underbelly of 1990s San Antonio. This is the third in the series (the first published in hardback, and the first my library has. I love Riordan, but not enough to hunt down the first two Tres Navarre books), but works just fine as an introduction to the world of Tres. There are a lot of characters to juggle, but Riordan manages that beautifully; Tres is easy to like, as are many of the other characters. Even the baddies are well-drawn, and have intriguing and complex motivations for their actions.

It’s vintage Riordan, to say the least. Not as funny as his books for children, but still quick-witted and engaging. It’s quite the homage to San Antonio; even though it’s rough and edgy, there’s an undercurrent of love and admiration for Riordan’s hometown. Probably most importantly, it’s brilliantly plotted (which is something that Riordan always does well); there’s enough information in the book to make the mystery solvable if you follow the clues (I didn’t call it!), but there’s also enough twists and turns to make the book exciting. Sure, it’s clunky in spots, but it’s also a page turner from the point a pipe bomb explodes into the first chapter until the final reveal at the end.

Which it to say: it’s Percy Jackson awesomeness for adults.

Sunday Salon: Authors from A to Z

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It’s been forever and a year since I’ve done a Weekly Geeks, but this one, on this Easter Sunday (Happy Easter! I hope you’re enjoying the day.), sounded right up my alley. It’s a list of authors — whatever category you choose — in ABC order.

I’m picking my favorites (with the book I really liked) from the past few years:

A – Kathi Appelt (Keeper)
B – Sarah Rees Brennan (The Demon’s Lexicon/The Demon’s Covenant)
C – Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising series)
D – Frances O’Roark Dowell (Falling Up, among others)
E – Stephen Edmond (Happyface)
F – Catherine Fisher (Incarceron/Sapphique)
G – Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere)
H – Shannon Hale (Forest Born)
I – Eva Ibbotson (A Song for Summer)
J – Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle)
K – Steve Kluger (My Most Excellent Year)
L – Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon)
M – Hilary McKay (Wishing for Tomorrow)
N – An Na (A Step from Heaven)
O – Anne Osterlund (Exile)
P – Terry Pratchett (I Shall Wear Midnight)
Q –
R – Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero)
S – Francisco X. Stork (Marcelo in the Real World)
T – Megan Whalen Turner (A Conspiracy of Kings)
U –
V – Claire Vanderpool (Moon Over Manifest)
W – Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan)
X –
Y – Lisa Yee (Bobby the Brave)
Z –

I’m only missing four letters in the past two years; not bad. What are some of your favorites?

One Hundred Years of Solitude

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by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
ages: adult
First sentence: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distand afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

The short story? Magical realism and I just don’t get along. I don’t know what it is; you’d think with all the fantasy books I read that I’d love the subtle of play between reality and magic, but it just doesn’t work for me. I find it grating and somewhat annoying and confusing and just plain irritating.

Also: I really don’t trust books that were part of the Oprah Book Club.

The long story? I’ve heard about Gabriel Garcia Marquez for years and years, and always figured, since he was so highly acclaimed, that I ought to read him. So, when I finally got the opportunity, I was quite interested. And yet, it didn’t take me long to realize that this book is completely incomprehensible (to me). It was flipping between time and memory and the plot was utterly confusing. I wasn’t getting much out of the lives of the characters.

So, halfway through when I couldn’t see a way out of this muddle that Marquez had gotten me into, I bailed. Without a backward glance.

Because magical realism and I are just not friends. At all.

Zita the Spacegirl

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by Ben Hatke
ages: 9+ (though I read it aloud to my 5 year old)
First sentence: “Finders keepers!”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

What kid doesn’t want to go on an adventure? Excitement! Different worlds! Being the hero!

I’m not sure if Zita ever felt that way, but she got thrown into it one day, when she and her friend Joseph discovered a device with a button. Zita must be one of those curious types: she pushed the button… which opened a portal, and both she and Joseph got pulled through.

And thus the adventure begins. Joseph gets captured by an evil-looking tentacled beast, and Zita goes after him to save him. While he’s been tied up by the Scriptorians (on this unnamed planet), being expected to save the world from certain doom — an asteroid is headed their way — Zita experiences the world, meeting all kinds of unusual friends: a giant mouse, a robot named One who has delusions of grandeur; a nervous robot named Robby, who’s been hiding in the wastes; a beast named Strong Strong; and a man with magical tools named Piper. All who help her get to the Scriptorians’ castle to rescue Joseph.

It’s quite the adventure, one with clever drawings and story. It’s funny and sweet and adventurous. We couldn’t get enough of it; my girls and I were completely captivated are already clamoring for the next installment.

You can’t get better than that, I think.

Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie

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by Jordan Sonnenblick
ages: 11+
First sentence: “There’s a beautiful girl to my left, another to my right.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This is a cancer book. Just to get that out of the way.

Steven is in eighth grade and on his way to being a wicked-good jazz drummer (being one of two eighth graders in the All-City Jazz Band). He has had a crush on Renee since third grade, and she still doesn’t know he exists. And his best friend, Annette, has been acting a little weird lately.

Steven also has a younger brother. Jeffrey is five, and annoying in the way five year olds can be. And while Steven doesn’t mind his younger brother, he often feels like he’s competing with Jeffrey for his parent’s affection. And who can win out against a very cute five-year-old?

Steven starts the year complaining about everything, but in October, things change. That’s when Jeffrey’s diagnosed with leukemia, and Steven’s — well, the entire family’s, really — whole world is turned upside down. It’s heartbreaking and tough to deal with, as we witness this crumbling. And yet, it’s not a downer of a book. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s endearing. Steven’s a good kid, and while he struggles and is resentful, he means well. By the end you’ve grown to love both him, and Jeffrey (whom you couldn’t help but love), and understand and empathize with them. It’s an excellent example of showing: while we get Steven’s perspective, we’re never pummeled over the head with anything.

Which makes it the best kind of cancer book, I think.

A Natural History of the Senses

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by Diane Ackerman

ages: adult
First sentence: “Nothing is more memorable than a smell.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Going into this book, I didn’t quite know what I’d be getting from a “natural history” of the senses. It’s such a broad term; and how does one actually provide a history of something that’s been part of the human experience since the beginning of time?

What I got was one part history, one part science, and one part poetry. Ackerman divided the book into five sections, one for each of the senses. She started with smell, then worked through touch, taste, hearing and vision. I had a hard time at first, getting used to the style of the book, which seemed haphazard and disorganized. It seemed like it was a series of short essays cobbled together without much sense and flow. But, after the smell section — which was the worst for the disjointedness — it settled into a rhythm, a little bit of poetic description, a bit of science (most of which I wondered if still was “correct”, since the book was written in 1990), a bit of social history. Much of it was fascinating. Her descriptions (passages of which I would love to copy down, but are much, much too long), especially about how the senses work in relationships, were elegant and poetic. But, in the end, it wasn’t enough. I wanted something less thrown together, something that flowed more, something that was less disjointed.

Because when it was good, it was very good. I just wanted more goodness.

Sunday Salon: Geeky Goodness

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I spent all of yesterday deep cleaning my kitchen, and I’m beat. Literally; I can barely move this morning. Then I dreamed last night that I was hanging out in Amsterdam with John Green, which only makes me want to throw a dinner party for all my favorite geeky, nerdy, fun, weird famous people (including, but not limited to: John Green, Mo Willems, Maureen Johnson and, of course, Nathan Fillion). Which means, today’s Salon needs to be nerdy-geeky weird. Right? (Check this out, first. Just so we’re all on the same page.)

Hank Green’s vlogbrothers video this week was 31 Nerd Jokes, some of which are had me spitting milk through my nose:

And Thursday, I think it was, Hubby came to me and said I needed to watch something that will change my life. (I asked if it had Nathan Fillion in it.) He blogged about it here… and while it doesn’t have Nathan Fillion, I am quite excited for this. It really is worth the 10 minutes.

Also, if you haven’t read Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue envelopes yet, and you have an e-reader, you’re in luck! She’s offering it for two weeks for FREE. See here for details.

And I know it’s not geeky, but I was amused by this. I’m currently reading one of Rick Riordan‘s adult mysteries, The Last King of Texas. It’s not bad, as far as books go, but there was this one line that got me curious: “Tell any San Antonian, “Meet me at the Boots,” and they’ll instantly know what you mean.” Not being from San Antonio, I didn’t. So I Googled it, and got this.


You gotta love Texas.

I’m sure there’s more geeky stuff out there, but I’m currently distracted by listening to this interview with Mo Willems. Have a great Sunday!

Audiobook: Falling In

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by Frances O’Roark Dowell
ages: 9+
Read by Jessica Almasy
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I love me some Frances O’Roark Dowell. I first discovered her a couple years ago when Shooting the Moon was nominated for a Cybils. I absolutely fell in love with her books, her writing style, her storytelling. There’s something simple about her books, and yet her stories are actually quite sophisticated, with subtle dark undertones.

This book is pretty much all that I’ve come to expect from Dowell. It was simple: the story of a somewhat neglected girl — Isabel Bean, age 10 — with an aura of the otherworldly about her. She doesn’t really have friends, and while she’s not a bad student or child, she doesn’t really seem to fit in at all. Her mother isn’t very motherly, and Isabel drowns that neglect in a sea of books, especially fairy tales.

It’s all fine and good, I suppose, until one day when Isabel hears this buzz coming from the floor of her school. She gets sent to the principal’s office (because hearing a buzz isn’t exactly normal school behavior), and on the way there gets sidetracked and fell into a closet into the nurse’s office.

Into where, you may ask?

Well, into another world. One which, in Jessica Almasy’s capable hands, was slightly British. Definitely old-fashioned, and most definitely fairy-tale-ish. With a magic, of sorts, a witch that’s terrorizing the county of five villages. Isabel has to help defeat the witch, of course, but it’s not really about that. It’s about making friends, and learning to be a friend. Simple, yet elegant.

And Almasy’s narration was spot-on. Her voice was slightly irritating to begin with, but after a while it became Isabel. And it helped that she had different voices for the characters, ones in which you could picture the character just from their voice. It’s also a book that worked better as an audio — there were lots of interruptions by the narrator, making the book more of a story to be heard rather than read. I’m not sure I would have liked it as much as I did had I read it. (Though it is Frances O’Roark Dowell.) But it was a fabulous listen.

Sweet 15

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by Emily Adler and Alex Echevarria
ages: 13+
First sentence: “Here’s how it went down, the beginning of The End.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.

Destiny Lozada is about to turn 15. And because she’s the daughter of Puerto Ricans, this means she must have a quinceañera. (You know what that is, right? The coming-of-age party/religious rite for Latina girls? Good.) Well, her mother really, really wants to throw Destiny a huge party, even though they really can’t afford it. And Destiny’s older sister, America, is thoroughly against that idea. Destiny, who doesn’t want to rock any boats, is trapped in the middle, watching her sister rant, her mother rack up costs, and her father try and work enough to pay for them.

She doesn’t want any of it. But no one’s asking her.

She spends the first few weeks of high school being buffeted this way and that by her mother, her best friend Omar (who Destiny’s mother has recruited), and her sister. It’s frustrating and humiliating, all made worse by the crush she has on a former friend’s cousin. Thankfully, even though the book meanders a bit, it finally comes to a head, in which everything turns out both a little bit predictably and just as it should.

The best thing about this book, however, was not the writing (okay) or the plotting (a bit on the slow side). It was the fact that in these pages there is a stable, hardworking immigrant family, with men who are neither into gangs or drugs, who hold jobs and work hard and are smart. It’s so nice to see Latin@s being portrayed that way; too often they are reduced to stereotypes: the women work hard and love their lazy, good-for-nothing, gang member men. Bah! I loved the family relationship here, for even though Mama and America were overbearing and not listening to Destiny, it’s quite evident that they love her and really do want what’s best. And her father, even though he doesn’t play an active role in the conflict, is a quiet pillar of strength and love. It’s amazing.

And that’s a lovely, lovely thing to see.