Holly Schindler Sells Third Title!

Holly Schindler, author of the awesome A BLUE SO DARK, has made the announcement on her blog that her third title, tentatively called FERAL, is forthcoming from HarperCollins!  Watch the video below to get some more information on Holly's new contemporary and be sure to follow her on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date on her awesome works.  Another book I'm excited for!  And it's probably not coming out for at least a year and a half at this point.  Sigh.  I guess I'll just have to wait.

A Blue So Dark Only .99 for Kindle!

In case you haven't heard, Holly Schindler's A BLUE SO DARK is available for Kindle for a mere .99! To add to that, Holly's even willing to sign the copy via Kindlegraph! So what are you waiting for? If you haven't read A BLUE SO DARK yet, now's the perfect time! Go out and buy it. You know you got a dollar.

Holly Schindler Has Trailers!

I don't normally post book trailers but if it's for a book I love, why not? As you may already know, I LOVED Holly Schindler's A BLUE SO DARK, as my review can attest to. So if you haven't read it, you really should. Here's the trailer to further entice you.

While I haven't read Holly's latest, PLAYING HURT, I'm sure it's up to par of BLUE so it's definitely worth checking out. Have another trailer to further lure you to the pretty book.

And Holly just wanted to let everyone know that once she reaches 200 "likes" on her author Facebook page she's going to have some swag giveaways for her fans! And if you spread the book love by reposting the trailers and sending the link over to Holly, you can get extra credit into the contest. So get liking and get reading!

Ban This! Author Bites - Holly Schindler

Below Holly takes a look at the danger of books . . . thanks for contributing, Holly!

Book banning recently hit disturbingly close to home when Republic, Missouri chose to ban Vonnegut’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE and Ockler’s TWENTY BOY SUMMER from the school library. Shortly thereafter, another disturbing story broke: a female student in Republic reported a sexual assault by another student, only to be disbelieved, suspended, even forced to apologize. When allowed to return to school, she reported a second assault; DNA from a rape kit confirmed an attack did in fact take place, and matched the boy the female student identified after the first alleged attack.

Okay, you’re saying. This story of sexual assault is disgusting. It’s horrific. It’s infuriating beyond all measure. Why is it being mentioned in a post about book banning?
Republic residents themselves linked the two events, as they organized a protest to the recent events, crying out, “Ban rape, not books.”

Which brings up an interesting question: just how dangerous are books?

We send our students to school believing they’ll be safe…but are books something that any teenager really needs protection from? As a society, we tell our teenagers that they are, in many ways, ready to lead an adult life. At sixteen, we put car keys in their hands. At eighteen, we allow them to enlist in the military. Are the ideas present in any book more dangerous than a vehicle? More dangerous than a gun, war?

I suppose the case could be made for the power of ideas. (That ideas are what lead to horrors like war…) But at eighteen, we put voter ID cards in teens’ hands. We tell them that they’re ready to help make decisions that shape our future as a country—but they need shielding from the concepts in works of literature?

Of course, as an author, I’m against banning of any book from any facility. Period. I do not support the removal of a book from any shelf. But I believe YA literature is important because it depicts characters who are navigating tough, adult situations for the first time—as are YA readers. YA characters are flawed, and while they stumble along the way, in the end, they succeed—they inspire readers to have faith that they will succeed, as well. That they, too, will find their place in this world.

Dangerous? Not in my book…

Author Love Feels So Good Even Though Holly Schindler is Playing Hurt

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up timing Holly's Author Bites post only a week before the release of her second book, Playing Hurt. Now normally you guys know I don't promote books I haven't read but I give passes to authors whom I have read, like Holly. Why? If I've loved one of their books already, the chances of me loving more by the same author are pretty high. That's just the law of odds there.

So to help Holly out, be sure to check out her next book, Playing Hurt, that drops on Tuesday, March 8th. Click the image to be taken to the BN website to purchase it.

But what really had me rarin' to help boost Holly's sales were the amazing words she said about book bloggers. After all of the shit that had been thrown at our fans by authors, teachers and librarians alike, reading something like what Holly sent me literally brought a tear to my eye. Her words blew me away and I knew I just had to share them with you all. With her permission, I'm reposting portions of her Playing Hurt promotion email here. I hope it makes you all feel as good as it made me feel. And I hope you'll help Holly get the word out about her sophomore book.

Let’s face it—bookstores are closing. My own hometown recently witnessed the closing of my favorite used bookstore, as well as the closing of the Borders Express in the mall—and our larger Borders store is also in the process of shutting its doors. My hometown is no stranger to losing brick-and-mortar stores. As a result, book blogs are absolutely replacing signings and stops at bookstores!

YOU are the absolute best promotional tool I’ve come across. You’re incredible!

YA book blogs have been so instrumental in spreading the word of my work that I have been encouraging all my fellow authors to make even better use of the blogosphere. I’ve already written one article for the SCBWI Bulletin on how to find and contact YA book bloggers, and am in the midst of writing a second article on the YA blogosphere.

I’m also in the midst of documenting this experience with PLAYING HURT. I will be writing extensively about how the blogosphere—and this chain-letter campaign—impact the sales of PLAYING HURT!

Together, we can make PLAYING HURT a YA blogosphere success story! And, by making PLAYING HURT a success, more authors will be seeking out book blogs with their own new and fun promotional ideas. I adore the YA blogosphere, and only want to see it grow and thrive. The idea of where the YA blogosphere might be in five or ten years excites me to no end. You guys prove every day that reading is absolutely not dead—and you are the most influential force right now connecting new writers to their audiences.

On behalf of all the new authors such as myself whom you have helped to find and grow a fan base, I say again, sincerely and with a heart filled with great affection, thank you.

Author Bites - Holly Schindler on the Rejection Spank

Because I loved A Blue So Dark so, I extended an invitation to Holly Schindler to guest post and she graciously agreed. Yay! I think Holly's post will be pretty poignant to a lot of us. Since so many of us are writers, when we see all those books coming out, we might not help but think that the road those books traveled was an easy one. But chances are it wasn't. Holly's trip to publication was a long and arduous one. All I can say is if I were her, I would have pasted all those rejections to my walls and used them as padding for my head. I'm just saying. Thanks for stopping by, Holly!

My debut YA, A BLUE SO DARK, was released last May to some rave reviews. The book earned a starred review in Booklist. VOYA called it “a lyrical tapestry…a work of poetry.” And bloggers fell in love with the book, too…Kristi at The Story Siren called BLUE The Most Beautifully Written Book in 2010.

With so much positive attention, you’re thinking, surely the book was an easy sell. Probably never got rejected once. Right?

Nope. Couldn’t be more wrong.

I wrote BLUE in late 2006, and had to revise the book globally at least four times before I sold it to Flux in early 2009. But in-between rewrites, I also submitted the book to every agent and editor I thought might be interested…

In all, the book was rejected more than 80 times by agents and editors before finally finding a home at Flux. That’s not a typo. More than 80 times.

And BLUE was only one of many manuscripts I had shopped in the seven and a half years I worked full-time trying to get a book accepted…I’d bet, if I went back through all my old submission material, that I was rejected at least a thousand times before I started to finally sell my manuscripts.

I say that not to scare anyone wading out into submission waters. I say it to inspire them. I really doubt that writing’s any easier of a gig to break into than acting…or playing music…It takes just as much discipline, just as many years of sacrifice as you pursue your dream…
But if you truly take the plunge, if you give it everything you’ve got, if you jump in and never let up, you’ll get there. And the longer it takes to finally get to the goal of a published book, the sweeter that victory will taste…

If you liked A Blue So Dark, be sure to check out Holly's next book, Playing Hurt, due out next week!

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler + Contest!

Published May 8th, 2010.

Mom knew that the mermaids - hand-carved from driftwood by the owner of a souvenir shop - were all I wanted to take home from Florida. As she bought them, she looked down at me, her eyes not just glittering but snapping with fire like two Fourth of July sparklers. She ran her fingers down the length of my nose, almost like you'd stroke a favorite pet, and said to the salesman, "We're just alike, me and Aura."

And you know, back then, the idea of that didn't scare the absolute hell out of me. (book back blurb)

For once, a book about teenagers with real problems. That's not really to undermine the issues that teenagers have. At that age, when you don't have any other worries, what your reputation is, who you're dating, who you're friends with, etc. is everything. But this is real. This is the real that makes all of that other stuff trivial shoe dirt. On the one hand you have a girl that's been saddled with being the sole caregiver to a schizophrenic mother and on the other, you have her friend that could go on the Teen Mom show, complete with deadbeat dad and the 'I know it all and my parents know nothing' attitude.

I was sucked into the story immediately. Aura just has a great voice; so much more mature than a lot of the other stories I read and for good reason. If you had to take care of a mentally ill parent all by yourself, you'd age really quickly too. But while I believed the voice as a whole, I didn't necessarily believe all of the references she made. Like equating her grandmother to Imelda Marcos. I'd like to meet a fifteen-year-old that even knows who Imelda Marcos is let alone how to use her person correctly in a reference joke. But those little things aside, Aura held her own throughout. You see just how strong and solid of a character she is by how she handles everything going on around her. I'm sure a lot of others would have ceased to even function in her situation but Aura carried on strong. She did what she could to protect her mother, who was number one to her even above herself.

But with that being said, it's also a horribly sad situation. You have the deadbeat dad that's perfectly content with stepping out of the situation and saving himself, leaving his teenage daughter to handle the problem that's no longer his because he signed on the dotted line making you empathize with Aura even more. Unfortunately, that really is an all too common situation, sad as it is to say. And the school not stepping in to help out? Unless you have outstanding teachers that actually want to help out their students (or super important students), the public school system is not there to function in that manner. Again, another sad thing to say, but it is true. When your bottom line is to have the kids functioning at a high enough level to bring in government funding, if one slips through the cracks, well, it probably would have been one that brought down the curve anyway. And if there aren't parents there to rally for that child, they're going to fade away. So while I think these elements help to isolate Aura even more and force her to function more independently (thus making them look a little contrived), they're not really out of the ordinary situations and they just made the situation all the more real.

I could have lived without Aura's love interest. I just felt like he was a jerk from the beginning. "Paint my board." No please, not even asking. Just do it. Why haven't you done it yet? Where's my board? I just wanted her to say, "dude, I burned it in the pit in the backyard." Granted he didn't know Aura's situation but even mutually exclusive from that, I thought he was a jerk and not worth the notice Aura was giving him.

I even really liked Janny for the basketcase that she was. New moms in desirable situations have a hard time adjusting and here you have a new mom that's barely 16, just emancipated from her parents and without the sperm donor helping out. As much as I wanted to slap her from backing away from Aura when she needed her (and as much as I didn't think Aura leaning on Janny earlier in life was touched upon like it should have been), I didn't hate her for it. She had enough issues on her plate and she couldn't fit Aura's on there anymore either. I get that. Still, I would have liked to have seen Janny be the lean-to earlier in life (as opposed to just a stronger personality) for Aura in order for the situation to be a little more balanced. While I did understand Janny's situation, without that weight behind it, it looked like she was just plugging her ears, demanding that Aura understand her situation but not offering the same understanding in return. It could have been the way I read it and just missed it. But it looked unbalanced to me.

This book is as real as real can get. It's the effects of a mental illness not on the sick individual but on the family around them. When one spoke is broken, it gets harder and harder for the rest to pick up the slack and that's seen here with Aura and her mom. There is only one path to crazy for Aura and it's through creativity so she tries to stifle it as much as she can, in herself and her mom when she gets too bad. Stamp out the crazy and you can stamp out the sickness, keep it from coming back to haunt. At times it's painful to read but it's something that should be read. I'm sure there are more kids going through something like this than the numbers care to admit and like Aura, they're suffering with it. They're beating themselves up over their decisions when they shouldn't even be making decisions like that in the first place. It's sad but Aura's strength is revitalizing. Throughout the entire story it's a beacon of hope. You can see she knows what the right thing to do is. The real right thing to do. It just takes her a while to actually get there.

This is one of those stand-out books in the pile that is YA. There's nothing paranormal about it. There's no love triangle. Actually there's barely any love at all and what love is there is shredded, stressed to its breaking point. But there's perseverance and strength and you won't be able to help but root for Aura from beginning to end. You want everything to work out okay for her. You're desperate for it. It just has to. And that'll keep you turning the pages until the end.

Contest Time!!!

Want my copy? Then just fill out the form below for your chance to win. Open to US residents 13 years of age and older only. One entry per person per email address. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Contest ends January 17th at midnight, EST.