CATHERINE by April Linder: Cover Buzz & Guest Post (+Giveaway)

I am super excited to be able to help spread the word about the new cover for the paperback edition of CATHERINE by April Lindner which will be available this August.

Both covers are amazing but convey something very different with the image and colors. And I’m thrilled to be able to welcome April Lindner to the blog with a post discussing them both.

There is also a giveaway for an Amazon eGift Card. Just scroll to the bottom of this post for details and to enter.

While CATHERINE’s paperback release is still a few months away, if you purchase the eBook edition now, it comes with the new cover. And if you’re a fan of the first cover, the hardback copy is still available to purchase.

Both covers rock, but which one is your favorite?

 Hardcover                                       Paperback 

About the Book

Title: Catherine

Author: April Lindner

Publisher: Poppy

Release date: January 1, 2013 (hardcover) | August 19, 2014 (paperback)

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook

Catherine is tired of struggling musicians befriending her just so they can get a gig at her Dad's famous Manhattan club, The Underground. Then she meets mysterious Hence, an unbelievably passionate and talented musician on the brink of success. As their relationship grows, both are swept away in a fiery romance. But when their love is tested by a cruel whim of fate, will pride keep them apart?

Chelsea has always believed that her mom died of a sudden illness, until she finds a letter her dad has kept from her for years -- a letter from her mom, Catherine, who didn't die: She disappeared. Driven by unanswered questions, Chelsea sets out to look for her -- starting with the return address on the letter: The Underground.

Told in two voices, twenty years apart, Catherine delivers a fresh retelling of the Emily Brontë classic Wuthering Heights, interweaving a timeless forbidden romance with a captivating modern mystery.

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Promises, Promises: Judging a Book by Its Cover

By April Lindner

We’ve all been told that you can’t judge a book by its cover. And yet some of us book lovers can’t help ourselves; there’s nothing like a gorgeous cover to lure us in. More often than not, an enticing cover is the main thing that moves me to pick up a book I've never heard of, to start paging through it, giving the first few paragraphs a chance to seal the deal—or not.

So for me the most exciting moment in the whole bookmaking occurs when a book’s future cover appears in my inbox. I click on the thumbnail, and wait breathlessly as the image blooms onto my computer screen. Only then can I imagine my manuscript as a book—on a shelf, or, better still, in the hands of a reader. I know the cover will set the book’s tone. And it will make promises—hopefully the right ones.

All of this explains why I’m so thrilled by the new cover of Catherine’s paperback edition, due out in August. Don’t get me wrong: I love the original Catherine cover. Lush and dramatic, it makes certain promises—ones I believe the book keeps. The elegant model in her kickass stance promises a strong female protagonist. (Actually, the book has two alternating strong female narrators—Catherine and her daughter Chelsea.) And the background, with the iconic Flatiron Building rising up through the mist, promises the book’s Lower Manhattan setting will be as important as its characters. The title typeface—bold and purple—promises a confident, free-spirited heroine—exactly how I see Catherine herself.

But the new paperback cover—already available to readers who download the Ebook-- makes a different set of promises. On it, a boy and a girl hold each other in the shadows of a graffiti-covered underpass. They gaze at each other in rapt wonder, their shoulders, neck and heads echoing the shape of a heart. Secret romance, this cover says. It promises love against the odds. The scene is gritty—less glamorous than the cityscape on the original—but this grittiness befits the book’s main setting, a post punk night club on the Bowery. The title’s typeface is still bold, but its peachy color underscores the sweet and optimistic innocence of this couple’s embrace.

Inspired by the classic romance Wuthering Heights, Catherine is a story of star-crossed love interwoven with mystery. Its soundtrack is the post-punk music played by Catherine’s boyfriend, Hence. And the new paperback cover captures that complex mood exactly, I think. In fact, when it popped up on my computer screen for the first time, I almost swooned. There it was, in front of me: almost exactly the picture I saw in my imagination as I wrote the book.

An author can hope for nothing more than that.

About April Lindner

April Lindner is the author of three novels: Catherine, a modernization of Wuthering Heights; Jane, an update of Jane Eyre; and Love, Lucy, due out in January, 2015. She also has published two poetry collections, Skin and This Bed Our Bodies Shaped. She plays acoustic guitar badly, sees more rock concerts than she’d care to admit, travels whenever she can, cooks Italian food, and lavishes attention on her pets—two Labrador retriever mixes and two excitable guinea pigs. A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, April lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.

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The Giveaway

The Cover Buzz Blast includes a blast-wide giveaway for a $15 Amazon eGift Card to one winner.

• Must be 13 or older to enter
• Giveaway is open to anyone who can accept eGift Cards from Amazon's US online store
• Giveaway ends on March 25th at 11:59 p.m. Pacific

Enter in the Rafflecopter below...

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YALLFest Interview with Cinda Williams Chima!

Hey everyone!  Today I have a SUPER exciting interview to share with you all. 

If you didn't know (and you really should because it is an awesome event) YALLFest is a great YA Author Festival held in Charleston, South Carolina hosted by Blue Bicycle Books.  Still a baby, with 2013 being it's third year, YALLFest brings some of the BIGGEST names in YA books together for one day of ridiculous amazing fun.  To get people excited, they have picked bloggers across the internet to host interviews with the authors attending the festival.  I am one such lucky blogger!  

Check out the rockstar author that will be gracing us with her presence at the festival down below and keep checking back as the countdown to YALLFest keeps going!

The Interview

What one thing do you need to have when you write?
A computer

Describe your book in 5 words
Wizards misbehave, magic goes mutant.

What is the hardest line to write- the first or the last?
Usually the lines in between.

Best writing tip you ever received?
Give yourself permission to write badly.

Tell us 5 random facts about yourself.
1. I am a twin.
2. I am named after a character in a novel.
3. I didn’t really start driving until I was 27.
4. I am descended from Puritans and scoundrels.
5. I used to be in a folk music band.
Where's your favorite place to write?
On a balcony overlooking the ocean.

What are you working on now?
I’m writing The Sorcerer Heir, the fifth book in a trilogy.

At what point in the development of an idea do you know that it will become a full-length novel?
When I’m finished with a full-length novel.

Books by Cinda Williams Chima

The Seven Realms

The Heir Chronicles
AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY | BARNES AND NOBLE | INKWOOD BOOKS

CINDA WILLIAMS CHIMA

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Cinda Williams Chima grew up with talking animals and kick-butt Barbies. She began writing poetry and stories in third grade, and novels in junior high school. Her Heir Chronicles young adult contemporary fantasy series includes The Warrior Heir (2006), The Wizard Heir (2007), and The Dragon Heir (2008), all from Hyperion, with The Enchanter Heir coming Oct. 22, 2013. 

Chima’s best-selling YA high fantasy Seven Realms series launched with The Demon King (2009), followed by The Exiled Queen (2010), The Gray Wolf Throne (2011), and The Crimson Crown (2012). 

Chima’s books have received starred reviews in Kirkus and VOYA, among others. They have been named Booksense and Indie Next picks, an International Reading Association Young Adult Choice, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, to the Kirkus Best YA list, and the VOYA Editors’ Choice, Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and Perfect Tens lists. Her books also appear on numerous state awards lists. Her books have been New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestsellers. 

Chima was a recipient of the 2008 Lit Award for Fiction from the Cleveland Lit and was named a Cleveland Magazine Interesting Person 2009. She lives in Ohio with her family, and is always working on her next novel.

                                                    FACEBOOK| BLOG| GOODREADS

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Welcome to my stop on the Zenn Scarlett Blog Tour!!

I am so excited to be a stop on the Zenn Scarlett Blog Tour!  I absolutely loved Zenn Scarlett, Christian Schoon has an amazing  and am happy to share it with you all!  

For my stop I was lucky enough to have Christian talk about Miss Scarlett herself, and let us into how she came to be the kick-butt heroine we come to know in the book!

Please check out my review here, and visit all the past and future stops of the tour here!

Coming May 7, 2013 (US/Canada) - May 2, 2013 (UK) 

From Strange Chemistry/Angry Robot Books 

Distributed in U.S./Canada by Random House

Pre-order Zenn Scarlett

Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Book Depository - Inkwood Books  

When the concept for my YA Sci-Fi novel, Zenn Scarlett, first materialized out of the neural mist in my frontal lobes, certain aspects came into focus more-or-less fully fleshed. 

My main character was a young student studying to be an exoveterinarian. This person would specialize in treating colossal alien creatures. As the mist cleared, I could now see that my hero was a heroine, between 15 and 17 years old. She appeared to have red hair, long but not styled in any discernible way, no make up… in fact, her face was ruddy from sun and wind, there was a finger-swipe of dirt on her cheek, which was freckled. My protagonist, it was obvious, was unconcerned with her physical appearance. She must have more important things on her mind. Her name, she told me, would be Zenn. She didn’t ask if I liked it, and who am I to argue? So, a strong-willed girl who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself and who has a flare for the exotic. As the fog continued to lift and more details emerged, I could see she was wearing old, patched coveralls with the pant legs rolled up to fit. Hm. Resources might be a little tight where she lives. She also wore a battered, soft-shell backpack of some unusual sort of leather. This was her exoveterinary field kit, a hand-me-down from a relative, she didn’t say which one. I’d figure that out later. Behind her, a huge shape loomed up out of the mist. Sleek, mammalian, about 80-feet long, an otter-like head with impressive jaws and teeth. A whalehound, of course.

Quick cut to the next scene: Zenn is balanced on the hound’s snout. One of his two-foot-wide eyes is squinted shut, inflamed, painful. Zenn’s vet field-kit pack is now a different sort of rig, a tank filled with antibiotic-type solution. The tank has a hose with a nozzle. Zenn’s actions make it plain she’ll use the solution to rinse out the hound’s eye. And while her pose and manner tell me she’s perfectly fearless, comfortable even in this situation, I see she’s also donned some sort of safety harness. It loops up around the back of the hound’s head and will keep her from falling to the floor of the animal’s pen if the hound should startle or shake his head. So, fearless but not reckless.

Beyond the pen: buildings emerge from the fog. A dormitory, a library building, a huge infirmary. The buildings are stone-built, massive with an old-fashioned feel to the architecture, sort of a mash-up of modern and medieval. So, Zenn is studying at what looks like a monastery or cloister of some sort. The terrain is rusty red. Ah…. we’re on Mars. I should have guessed. A wall of thick mud-brick becomes visible. To keep the big animals in? Or to keep worse things out?

So, why would Zenn turn up as a female in this kinda dangerous, kinda dystopian off-world environment full of lumbering alien giants, instead of being a teen male? She didn’t seem willing to discuss this state of affairs, and actually acted a little insulted I’d even asked. But there’s this: our own veterinarian who ministers to the beasts on our farm is female, permanently young in spirit, absolutely fearless and uber-competent. I’m sure this had lots to do with it. I’ve seen this vet, Dr. Jenni, tackle the up-close, hands-on medical needs of animals from kittens to black bears, mountain lions and 17-foot reticulated pythons with the same matter-of-fact “this is my job” courage and calmness. And she’s got the bite marks, claw-gouges, bruises and scars to prove it. Zenn and Dr. Jenni would get along famously… though there might be a little whiff of competitiveness charging the air around them

Then, there’s Zenn’s deep, almost super-human empathy and compassion for the alien creatures she studies and helps to cure. If a teen guy had stepped out of the mist in those early phases of the book, I would’ve done my best to imbue him with this quality of sympathy and caring for the animals; in fact, I myself suffer from hyper-empathetic responses to animal suffering or distress. But it wasn’t a guy who showed up for the job, and frankly, my work was simplified by Zenn’s arrival. And, since she was also so strong, self-confident, logical and goal-oriented, I felt like she brought just the right combination of characteristics to the story.

So, that’s the how and why of Zenn being the heroine she is in the book… and how she made her presence so powerfully felt from the start. I can only hope that as an author I was able to do justice to this amazing young woman. And, of course, it’s still a work in progress. Zenn and I are well along in writing the sequel. And trust me, she’s got some heavy duty opinions about how things should proceed.

 Born in the American Midwest, Christian started his writing career in earnest as an in-house writer at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. He then became a freelance writer working for various film, home video and animation studios in Los Angeles. After moving from LA to a farmstead in Iowa several years ago, he continues to freelance and also now helps re-hab wildlife and foster abused/neglected horses.  He acquired his amateur-vet knowledge, and much of his inspiration for the Zenn Scarlett series of novels, as he learned about - and received an education from - these remarkable animals.

Places to find Christian: Blog - Twitter - Goodreads

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Zenn Scarlett (Review)

Title: Zenn Scarlett

Author(s): Christian Schoon
Edition: ARC, 3o4 pages
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Publication Date: May 7, 2013 (US)
Source: Received from publisher
Buy: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Book Depository - Inkwood Books

The Summary

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When you're studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school... is a different kind of animal.

Zenn Scarlett is a resourceful, determined 17-year-old girl working hard to make it through her novice year of exovet training. That means she's learning to care for alien creatures that are mostly large, generally dangerous and profoundly fascinating. Zenn’s all-important end-of-term tests at the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic on Mars are coming up, and, she's feeling confident of acing the exams. But when a series of inexplicable animal escapes and other disturbing events hit the school, Zenn finds herself being blamed for the problems. As if this isn't enough to deal with, her absent father has abruptly stopped communicating with her; Liam Tucker, a local towner boy, is acting unusually, annoyingly friendly; and, strangest of all: Zenn is worried she's started sharing the thoughts of the creatures around her. Which is impossible, of course. Nonetheless, she can't deny what she's feeling.

Now, with the help of Liam and Hamish, an eight-foot sentient insectoid also training at the clinic, Zenn must learn what's happened to her father, solve the mystery of who, if anyone, is sabotaging the cloister, and determine if she's actually sensing the consciousness of her alien patients... or just losing her mind. All without failing her novice year!

(Goodreads)

My Opinion

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I was lucky enough to be contacted by Christian himself to be a part of the blog tour for Zenn Scarlett.  As soon as I read the summary, I knew I had to get my hands on this book!  I've been looking for a fun, original sci-fi story, and Zenn Scarlett is just what I wanted.

Zenn Scarlett is a teenager living on Mars in one of the many colonies founded by early Earth settlers.  She lives with her uncle, the head of the local exoveterinarian cloister, studying to be an exoveterinarian.  But with a dwindling crop yield and the mysterious disappearance of intersteller transport ships, the cloister is looking at rough times.  And that's when the accidents start to happen.

I loved the world-building in this book!  Christian did an amazing job crafting a complete world, with far reaching implications.  I feel like with all the details the reader gets just in book 1, the next installment will have even more.  There are a lot of interesting things going on with the potential to continue past Zenn's story.  This is the kind of sci-fi I love, one that's rich with backstory and fully fleshed out for the future.  And while Mars doen't seem like an original setting, I think it's nice going back to the first planet men use to dream about visiting.

I like that much of this book is looking at Zenn's life in the cloister, but there are surprises and problems that crop up to disturb the normalcy of her life.  The fact that she's studying to be an exoveterinarian is really cool, with interesting, huge beasts being treated.  In some ways the book reads much like a contemporary but just set on a whole different planet.  It also has a very Western feel to it, with Mars being a frontier of sorts.  But then again it is very technologically advanced.  If any of you have watched the show Firefly, it feels like that when I'm reading.

I can't wait to see what the next installment of Zenn's story will bring.  She's learned some truths about her mother and herself, with more to come in the future.   Along with some important friends, Zenn will have to jump into the unknown, and I'm excited to be a part of the ride!  Zenn Scarlett by Christian Schoon is a wonderful debut by a wonderful author!  But don't take my word for it!  Check it our for yourself at your local bookstore or library! 

Extras

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Check out my stop on the Zenn Scarlett Blog Tour and read a post by Christian Schoon all about how Zenn came to be the kick-butt heroine we read about!

Final Rating

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Book Cover: 4/5
Book Title: 4/5
Plot: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Writing: 9/10
Ending: 9/10
Overall: 44/50: B+

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