Sunday 27 September 2015

Favourite Contemporary Authors

In today's post, I will be revealing my all time favourite Contemporary Authors!
--This will be in no particular order--

So let us begin!!!

Click on the pictures to be linked to their twitters or websites!

1# Rainbow Rowell
Rainbow Rowell is the author of Landline, Attachments, Fangirl and Eleanor and Park...and now Carry On! I am obsessed with her writing - her favourite of mine probably being Landline, and I read her books all sometime last year. 
She is one of those authors that reduced me to millions of tears leaking from my eyes- more tears that usual because when I read I almost always cry. She is amazing, if you haven't heard of her - I am shocked, now you know!

2# Becky Albertalli 
Becky Albertalli is an author that I am very very openly obsessed with. I have read the one book she has published - Simon Vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda, and was broken for days. I tweeted her to inform her of my feels that have been obliterated, so I am sure she is aware that she is that awesome. 

3# David Levithan
I was first introduced to David Levithan through Will Grayson Will Grayson which he co wrote with John Green. I read it and loved it - particularly the characters that he created so I decided to check out his other work. That is when I found the truth out. 

David Levithan, is my twin brother. Let me explain...his writing, does things to my brain, it's like we're soulmates in a blood related or DNA related way...thats the best way I can explain it. He's just everything. 

4# Holly Bourne 
Holly Bourne is an author that I discovered by accident. I saw a book that looked like a red velvet cake...I was hungry so I bought it. I went home, opened the book and before I knew it, it was 4am and I was crying on the floor of my room. 
This may be confusing if you have never heard of or read one of her books. If you are one of these people then, where have you been!? It's not too late though, you can still join the fandom! Her book - The Manifesto on How To Be Interesting, has red pages aka red velvet.

 I then read Soulmates, and died further. Then recently I read 'Am I Normal Yet' and surprise surprise, she killed me again. Can your heart literally shatter permanently? That's how I feel.

5# Holly Smale
Holly Smale is an author that I casually discovered. I picked up the book, read the blurb then thought this sounds pretty good. haha! pretty good, silly past me. This book series has been amazing so far, I have enjoyed every single book and I am in love with all of the characters!

6# Stephan Chbosky
Stephan Chbosky as you may or may not know, is the writer of the brilliant novel 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'. I loved the book, and surprise surprise, ended up a blurbering mess by the end. You have probably heard of and or watched/ read Perks....but to avoid false assumptions, it is awesome so read it.

7# John Corey Whaley
I read his book - Noggin, last year when I read a review on it that described it as amazing and awesome and a must read blah blah blah. I needed a book to read, and I liked the description. I wasn't expecting much when I went into the book, because I didn't know much about the author or his work. I wish I could re read that book over and over again, using the memory serum from divergent to wipe my brain of the plot so that I can love it again.

I still need to read his other novel 'When things come back', so I am veryy excited!!

***

Those are my favourite Contemporary authors! Hope you enjoyed reading and agreed with me on some of my picks? hopefully all because I adore all of these authors. 

Stay tuned for more!

(Disclaimer: The images used are not mine, but can we take a moment to appreciate how pensive and author-y they all look?!!)

Yours Faithfully, 

~ She Who Writes



Saturday 26 September 2015

LGBTQIA - Coming Out Stories

LGBTQIA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer
 Intersex Asexual. 

"Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself" - Coco Chanel


In today's post I will be sharing some direct coming out stories that some of my friends have been so kind to share. :) I will also share how they came out to me and my reaction - which wasn't always the same! hopefully this will help people, as I think true friends will accept you no matter what race, gender, religion or sexuality you happen to be. I will be doing another post like this including more people in the community!

These are some of my friends answering the question of, How did you come out?

OMLETTE
"I am not sure really! I never knew how I found out, but the first few times I was in a relationship I didn't feel all that involved, and when I liked a guy it turned out I just liked him as a best friend and had to break it off because it was making me feel like a bad person. But every time I was with a girl it just seemed to click and everything was warm,  fuzzy and I felt kind of happy? I don't know...it just made sense to me."

"I didn't really come out to my family, I just started making constant gay jokes around them and they just kind of picked up, same with my friends."


Omlette is one of my closest friends, who I happened to take to prom because I wanted to be surrounded by awesome people! We've been friends for 6 years and her coming out didn't change anything about that...I am glad she did, because now she can continue being herself. 

Omlette didn't exactly 'come out' to me, because she knew my view on the LGBTQIA community and knew that there was no need. She kind of just told me that she was dating a girl, and I was like 'that's cool, does she like homestuck?' (for those unaware, homestuck is this online comic type series I believe that omlette is obsessed with)


NADIA
Nadia made a video on her coming out story, which you can view by clicking here!

When she came out to me,  it was a bit like...oh so that boyfriend of yours...is actually a girl, that's cool with me!

In both these situations it wasn't a big deal - as it shouldn't be. Never apologies for being who you are.

Stay tuned for more LGBTQIA posts!

Yours Faithfully,

~ She Who Writes

Monday 21 September 2015

YA Shot Blog Tour : CJ Skuse Interview

I am involved in yet another YA Shot Blog Tour stop which is pretty awesome! I am super excited for both the event -which is only around the corner now, and to also have the chance to work with CJ Skuse the author of 'Pretty Bad Things', 'Rock-oholic', 'Dead Romantic' and the new novel coming out this week entitled 'Monster'!!

You can find her novels at my two favourite places Waterstones | Amazon


So we decided to do a quick interview on publishing, favourites and more! At the end I will be discussing a giveaway - which is pretty cool if you ask me.

So Let's get started shall we?!

How long did it take you to get published, and do you have any advice to unpublished authors on how to get published?

Eleven years, from the age of 17 til I signed on the dotted line at 28 for Pretty Bad Things. But I’m glad it took that long because I learned A LOT in that time. I never stopped writing or believing that I’d get there one day and I didn’t take any shortcuts. Self-publishing was really frowned upon when I was sending my first book out; now it’s the norm, but I’m glad I didn’t go in that direction. It’s fine if people want to do that but for me, it would feel like a cheat. I knew the reason I wasn’t getting picked up by agents and publishers was because I wasn’t very good at writing – in short, I needed to get a lot better. So I signed on to do a double of creative writing degrees and voila – a month later, I had a contract with Chicken House. My advice is to have faith in your own talent, do everything in your power to become better at what you do and get a good,respected literary agent with a proven track record as soon as you can.


Do you read the same genre of books that you write about?

Yes, for the most part though I find it almost impossible to engage with YA when I’m working on a YA novel myself. I don’t trust YA authors who say they don’t read YA – it sounds so arrogant, like they have better things to do or something.

Is there a special place where you find the most creativity when writing?

No, but I do need a lot of thinking time before I sit down to do it. My university lecturer (and damn fine writer in her own right) Julia Green once said that writers can be writing even when they’rejust staring out of the window. I didn’t get what she meant for ages. Now when I walk my dog, I can write a whole chapter in my head or unpick a ‘plot knot’ entirely before I’ve even opened the laptop.

What themes do you hope to incorporate into future books? and what themes or topics do you think are missing from a lot of YA Novels being published?

I want to go quite dark with my next-but-one-book (currently titled Sweetpea) which is hopefully going to be an adult novel featuring a character from Monster grown up. And as for what themes or topics I think are missing, I’m not sure any are. I just hope that YA doesn’t get too diluted. There’s this horrible vogue to drag it into a children’s bracket, clean it up, remove all the elements that made it what it is to suit a younger audience (and make more money, of course). I hope that gets shut down soon.

Where did the inspiration for your latest book 'Monster' come from?

I wanted to write an underdog story along the lines of the movie ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ but set in a boarding school and I’ve wanted to write a story in this setting since my first book, but the opportunity never arose. Paisley in Pretty Bad Things goes to one briefly before she’s expelled, and originally Zoe and Camille went to one in Dead Romantic but that was taken out in the disastrous first edit. So here it is again, fully-formed. Also, I spotted a story in a newspaper about a sighting of the ‘Beast of Bodmin Moor’ and one idea sort of leant itself to another and suddenly, there it was.

Would you say that you have a similar personality to any of the characters in your books?

I’ve always said there are five versions of myself and they are represented in my five novels. Paisley in Pretty Bad Thingsis my anger; Jody in Rockoholicis my stupidity; Camille in Dead Romantic is my romantic side; Nash in Monster is my ambition and Estella in my next bookThe Deviants is my frustration. None of them in their entirety is me but they all contain fragments of myself.

What are your top 5 YA novels?

1.The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

2.The Madolescents by Chrissie Glazebrook

3.The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

4.Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks


5.Doing It by Melvin Burgess

Is there a particular book that 'got' you into reading?

Not really. When I was 17 I was reading a lot of Gillian White and Irvine Welsh, utterly different novelists in their intentions but I loved that every one of their books was so different and yet so ‘them.’ Then I became obsessed with The Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame and read Alison Prince’s biography of him ‘An Innocent in the Wild Wood’ about fifty times. That became a sort of bible for me. He was the first author I’d come across who seemed so similar to myself, despite existing nearly a century before me – I really hooked into the whole idea of him being unable to let his childhood go and revisiting it through his writing. He’s been a massive inspiration.

And lastly, what was your reaction to being published? Did you cry, did you remain cool, calm and collected or were you just overwhelmingly happy!? :-)


No, I was shockingly underwhelmed actually. It had taken me eleven years and by that point, I’d just kind of thought’ ‘Well yeah, about time!’ It was a bit of an anti-climax if I’m honest. It was like when Del Boy finally became a millionaire, the thing he’d most dreamed of being throughout the entire run of Only Fools and Horses, but when he reached his goal, he had absolutely no idea what to do next. I didn’t know how to be anything else but trying to become published. Now it’s all about staying published and that’s the hardest part of all. The day I got my contract I came home, had sausage and mash and watched Deal or No Deal. Sad but true. It only ever feels real to me when I see a new cover design or a foreign edition. I really enjoy that.

So thats the end of the awesome Q&A with the equally awesome CJ Skuse! 

Now for the GIVEAWAY! The giveaway includes a signed copy of her new novel Monster which you can win by Re-tweeting this post! The closing date is the 2nd of October 2015. Remember to follow CJ on twitter for more novel updates! 




(Disclaimer: The images used in this post are not mine)

Yours Faithfully, 

~ She Who Writes

Sunday 20 September 2015

Book Review : Copper Gauntlet by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

*Slight Spoilers*
Today I will be reviewing the second book in the Magisterium series called Copper Gauntlet!

I was so excited to read this book because the first book was amazing - which is a rarity with me and series, so I had to wait until the 3rd of September before the release of the second book in the series. 

You can get these books at my two favourite places: Waterstones and Amazon


I read the first book in the series - The Iron Trial, during the Cram-a-thon in July and was hooked which is why I read this book so fast. As expected, this book was awesome, which is why it gets a rating of....



What I loved about the book?
I loved how real Callum - the protagonist, was. He kept thinking mean things about his closest friends out of jealousy and slight hurt which I think is something common in most people and isn't really highlighted in books. I also liked the fact that they were all celebrities in the end and that 'the assembly' were humiliated by Callum's sassy-ness. I love when mean adults in books are humiliated, it's fun to read.

What I disliked about the book?
First and foremost, the cover. I love the new covers...but I had 'The Iron Trial' in Hardback, with a totally different theme....so I guess I just don't like that it isn't consistent. Why didn't I get the Hardback you ask? The Hardback isn't out yet... 
:( 

I did not like how all over the place the book was, I read more contemporary novels which is why I sometimes can't get into action and with book genre's like this, you can't exactly settle down. 

Lastly, I didn't like how rebellious the book felt. I'm going to sound like a goody two shoes when I say this, but whenever I watch a show or read a book with high forms of rebellion against the law or the characters parents, I get so agitated and find it hard to go on. When I explain that to people they think I'm weird, I probably am..but oh well!

I would strongly recommend that you pick this up and read the whole series, because Holly Black and Cassandra Clare are amazing, and when two amazing people come together, they make something really awesome and Godly.



(Disclaimer: The Image used in this post is mine - apart from the last one! that isn't mine, but I wish it was I would love to meet the two of them!)

Yours Faithfully,

~ She Who Writes

Wednesday 16 September 2015

Story Time : The Knitting Apocalypse


This is something that happened around 4 years ago that I found quite funny. This is the story of how I turned people into zombies.

At age 12 I taught myself to knit and crochet. I would walk around school with my knitting needles knitting all sorts of things. I would knit on buses and trains and whilst I was walking up and down the busy roads in London. 

I then started to teach people, some people already knew how to knit and started bringing their knitting equipment in so that we could knit together. 

Before I knew it, the whole school was knitting...teachers, sixth formers, year 7's. I had started a trend...

The hallways were quieter, all you could hear was the clicking of knitting needles. This was obviously worrying, because at my school there is always noise.

I'm not quite sure how we recovered from that...but we did, I don't knit as often as before - probably to avoid starting another knitting apocalypse.


(Disclaimer: The gifs used in this post are not mine, someone awesome created these.)

Yours Faithfully, 

~ She Who Writes

Sunday 13 September 2015

Book Review : Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of The Universe By Benjamin Alire Sáenz

*Slight Spoilers, read with caution*
Today I will be reviewing a book that I got during early August! This book - you can probably guess from the title, is Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of The Universe!
Initial Thoughts: I thought before reading this book that it was a book about science, I am not sure why...it isn't a book about science, well it could be in certain parts I guess but not the science I was thinking of!

Where you can get this book: You can get this book from Waterstones or Amazon or any other book selling website that has it! - but those are my favourite.

Lets get started shall we!

What I loved about this book?
This must be a trick question because I loved everything about this book, it made me cry it made me laugh and I read it in basically one go! I loved how Benjamin developed their friendship, and how he presented both characters as being imperfect - really imperfect at times, and how he showed that your inner demons can be disabling to a persons character and life. 
Another thing I loved was the fact that he represented a very unrepresented group in YA! This is the first book I have read with a Mexican protagonist or even Mexican main characters...or come to think of it, any characters being Mexican at all.

What a disliked about this book?
Can I say nothing? no...okay, I disliked the fact that Benjamin messed with my feels!! I genuinely thought that Ari was in love with Dante...then he claimed he didn't like him that way...then they kissed and aahrhrhhrh!

You get the point. 

I gave this book a rating of 5 stars out of 5! Because it was amazing and beautiful and broke my feels - a lot. 

Stick around for more book reviews! 

(Disclaimer: The images used in this post are mine)

Yours Faithfully, 

~ She Who Writes

Saturday 12 September 2015

August Book Haul : 2015

This is the first ever book haul I have posted on here! - despite acquiring many books in some months. So i'll be counting any books I have bought/ received since...August 15th. (not including ebooks) 

There are no spoilers included! because I believe that going into a book should be done without knowing much about the book so that you can be surprised. But if you like knowing stuff, I have linked the goodreads and amazon pages for each book.

Let's get started shall we!

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
I got Grasshopper Jungle the day of Results Day to cheer me up. I haven't heard any positives or negatives about this book so i'll be going in blind! I hear it's LGBTQ themed in some parts? maybe I heard wrong.


Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
I have heard many many great things about this book which is why I bought it, also as a pick me up after results day!


There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake
I have never heard of this book in my life - I didn't buy it, it was sent to me, so as always I look forward to reading books that I haven't heard much about because then I can be surprised!


 The Rogue by Trudi Canavan
This is the second book in the Traitor Spy Trilogy which I picked up randomly, unaware of the plot and the authors previous work. I also found out that I accidentally picked up the second book...which means that I cannot read it yet. *sighs* 


Paper Towns by John Green
This is the movie cover edition of paper towns, I already own the normal covers but I was sent this and look forward to reading it - as I have been on a John Green ban for a year now.


Rock War by Robert Muchamore
I picked this up because I like picking up these book token novels, they are £1, and give me something to read during the read-a-thons with 'novella' based challenges.


Weightless by Sarah Bannan
I have also never heard of this book before as it was sent to me, but it looks really interesting and I look forward to reading this very soon!


The Sin Eaters Daughter by Melinda Sailsbury
I bought this as another pick me up after the tears that results day brought, as I have heard this book in passing but never thought to buy it...so this is basically a blind read. Exciting!! 


When MR Dog bites by Brian Conaghan
Never heard of this book beforehand - this was sent, and from the blurb I can tell that i'll like this...maybe even love this!


The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
I have heard so so so many good things about this book so when I received this in the mail I jumped for joy! I have heard good things so we'll see.


Flirty Dancing by Jenny McLachlan
 Never read anything by this author or heard of her before, so I am excited to have another blind read.


A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
 So here's the deal. I bought a signed edition of A Court of Thorns and Roses, then received another edition...2 is better than 1!


Copper Gauntlet by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
 I bought this as soon as it came out, and read it this week - I loved it!. I got this because I love Cassandra Clare, and I loved the first book, and needed to know what happens!


More Than This by Patrick Ness
 I ordered this also on the dreaded results day - in hardback because it has a secret door *giggles*. I have never read a Patrick Ness book so I am so excited because he gets so many great reviews, and I follow him on twitter and he's pretty freaking hilarious.


The Winners Curse by Marie Rutkoski
Never heard of this series before, and I look forward to reading this - was also sent.


The Winners Crime by Marie Rutkoski
Ditto.


Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan
I have never heard of this book, but the authors name rings a bell...Blind reading, much fun!!


Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
I planned on buying this, this month because Nazima over at Snazzy Reads and I were planning to read the whole series side by side. So when it got sent to me, I was so happy because I didn't have to go and search for it in watersones. Thanks to all those in support of my lazy lifestyle!


Love Bomb by Jenny McLachlan
Annndd lastly, Love bomb...another blind read! much excite :-D.


***

I'll be doing another Haul hopefully every 2 months or maybe every month if I feel ambitious enough!

I want to say thank you for the books that were sent over, I am really grateful, and also thanks to Waterstones who literally reserved the Copper Gauntlet for me without me asking, you guys rock!

(Disclaimer: The images were mostly mine apart from that awesome tea gif...that was someone else's beautiful creation)

Yours Faithfully, 

~ She Who Writes