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Featured Reviews

An Interview with Ruta Sepetys – transcript

Don’t forget to read our review of Out of the Easy and enter the giveaway! The following is a transcript of the interview with Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy author Ruta Sepetys. You can watch a cut version of the interview below or the full, half-hour length interview here. If you quote any of the interview, please credit us and provide a link either to this page or the YouTube video! Thanks. Rhys: Can you just tell us a bit about Out of the easy before we start? Ruta: Yes! Out of the Easy is set in New Orleans in 1950, and it follows the story of 17 year old Josie Morain who’s the daughter of a brothel prostitute. But despite the life she’s born into, Continue reading →

Out of the Easy + Giveaway

We’ve got a fantastic interview with Ruta Sepetys herself which you can watch here – it’s awesome and she talks about Between Shades of Gray, Out of the Easy and her next project! What do you do if your mother is a prostitute and makes your life a misery? You run. You run as fast and as far as you can, dream higher than any skyscraper and hope, wish, that beyond the warm, summer, jazzy streets of New Orleans there is a life for you. This is Josie Moraine’s dream. A dream of a life beyond. Hot on the heels of her debut novel, the harrowing yet hopeful Between Shades of Gray that brought awareness of Stalin’s Purges to a whole new audience, Ruta Sepetys is choosing to set her Continue reading →

Phil Earle talks about CHARACTERS

Today I have the pleasure to welcome Phil Earle, author of Heroic, to the blog. There are no rules to writing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either A) A terrible liar or B) Wants you to buy their book entitled ‘How to write a bestseller’. Either way, do not trust this person. They are telling you porkie pies. People can give you writing advice, of course they can, but there is no right, wrong or any one way to create a story. All you can do is listen to the people you trust or whose stories you enjoy and adapt their pearls to suit your own means. Right. That said, here’s me contradicting myself and waffling on about how to create believable, three-dimensional characters. So don’t take this as Continue reading →

One Seriously Messed Up Weekend In the Otherwise Un-Messed-Up Life of Jack Samsonite (Jack Samsonite #2)

Two years have passed since One Seriously Messed Up Week and Jack is now in Year 13…and he still hasn’t lost his kissing-virginity. This time though, he’s a man with a plan… As you would expect, One Seriously Messed Up Weekend follows in the vein of the original, bringing together a frankly bonkers plot which finds Jack and his friends, at varying points, on the school roof, hanging out of bedrooms and being chased by villainous eleven year olds. Jack’s utter incompetence at anything, including girls and school, is the core of the novel and provides the most laughs (and cringes, too – how could anyone be so stupid?!) Clempson manages to capture life as a teenage boy pretty accurately, which just goes to show that school hasn’t really changed Continue reading →

Don’t Ask

As part of the celebration for the publication of Light, the final novel in the Gone series, we’ve got the Michael Grant himself writing about what questions you should never ever ask him in an interview. Take note! I have two least favorite questions. The first is, “Will there be a movie or TV show for GONE?” Here’s why I don’t like this question: because we tried. Various Hollywood folks and I gave it our best shot. There were many conference calls. There were many trips to Hollywood to meet with people. There were a whole bunch of follow-up calls. I sat down face to face with a Very Big Deal at Sony/Columbia. In that meeting I had a Very Big Deal from The Hunger Games sitting beside me. But Continue reading →