Guest Post: Tammy Blackwell - New Year Resolutions Timber Wolves Style

When Aly first asked me to write a guest post for the first of January to celebrate the release of TimeMends, possibly with a New Years resolution theme, I immediately thought of My So-Called Life.* There is this episode that starts with all the characters sitting around watching a pre-stroke Dick Clark herald in 1995. And as they’re watching, they do voice-overs of all their resolutions. It’s one of my favorite moments of the show because you get this really awesome over-view of each of the characters. Because resolutions, they’re like this really intimate thing, you know?**

            So, inspired by the spirit of Angela Chase,*** I am sharing Scout and company’s spoiler-free resolutions.

Scout: No more messes. No clothes just laying around in piles of clean and unclean and kinda clean. No more accidentally growing science experiments in the bottom drawer of the cabinet in my bathroom. No more screwing up the lives of everyone I love. This year, I’m Talley-izing my life.

Jase: Increase my free throw average to .90. Stop wanting things I can’t have. Be more awesome.

Charlie: I need to learn to accept the things I cannot change, have the courage to change the things I can, and have the wisdom to know the difference. Or, at least, that’s what my therapist says. And me? I think I just need to grow up and move on.

Talley: Try harder. And maybe learn a foreign language.

Angel: I want to: 1. Learn how to use the stove. 2. Read all the Harry Potter books, even the ones that Mom thinks are too scary. 3. Grow taller.

Alex: Follow the rules and quit getting distracted by her.

Liam: Avenge and atone.

* I’m of the Catalano generation. I almost always immediately think of My So-Called Life. Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or maybe even Veronica Mars... You know, there is a chance my own New Years resolution should have been to watch less TV.

** This sentence can be blamed on the fact I turned My So-Called Life on in the background while I typed this. I think I may throw on a flannel and dye my hair red next.

*** Who wanted to not get caught up in her thoughts so much and become less introspective, except that might make her shallow, so she was going to have to think about it some more.

Thanks to Miss Tammy for the helping us to get to know her Timber Wolves Trilogy Characters a little better.  Tammy Blackwell is the Young Adult Services Coordinator for a public library system in Kentucky. When she's not reading, writing, or cataloging books, she's sleeping.  She is the author of the YA Novel Destiny Binds and now Time Mends.  

You can follow Tammy on twitter: @miss_tammy or check out her website: http://misstammywrites.blogspot.com/

For more information about her awesome characters, check out the Destiny Binds character interview Tammy did a few months ago, click here.

Guest Post - Review of Anna Dressed In Blood

Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen (August 30, 2011)
Audience: Young Adult
Format: Hardcover, ebook

My synopsis:
Cas Lowood isn’t your average teenager. Actually - he’s unlike any other person you’ve ever met. He’s a ghost killer (but please don’t call him a ghostbuster). Like his father before him, Cas has the unenviable job of hunting those spirits which still haunt this earth, hurting and killing people in their wake. With his father’s magical and deadly athame blade, Cas is able to send these murderous spirits away from this world. He travels with his mother (a white witch) and Tybalt, their ghost sensing cat, while secretly preparing himself to find and kill his father’s murderer. When he gets a tip about a ghost known as Anna Dressed In Blood out in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Cas knows that she is his next target. The story of a young Anna Korlov, murdered in 1958, inexplicable draws him. Once there, Cas tries to kill Anna but she is too strong - the strongest ghost he’s ever encountered. And she doesn’t kill him. But why? As Cas tries to figure this out he also starts to unravel the mystery of Anna Dressed In Blood.

Review:
Kendare Blake blends horror and teen angst into a delightfully creepy novel that will have you staying up late at night and turning on all the lights. It’s been awhile since I’ve been scared by a book but Anna Dressed In Blood managed it thoroughly. Cas, a jaded 17-year-old, has followed in his father’s footsteps to become a hunter of angry ghost spirits. In Blake’s world, when someone dies a violent death, they don’t always go away to where they are meant to. In her world, both good and bad people can come back as dark, twisted ghosts that lure the living to horrible deaths. Cas stops them by tracking them and setting a trap. Then he uses his mystical athame to send them away to parts unknown. Ghost killing is a gory business and Blake’s descriptions are often gruesome and chilling.

Cas is a complex character. Afraid to let anyone too close, he isolates himself and avoids making any real human connections. I admire Cas but I don’t always like him. He’s cocky and his snarkiness, especially towards those who want to help him, gets old. His father’s death has also made him bitter and serious. But he is also loyal and protective and I liked him more as the book went on. Forced to work with others for the first time, he learns to trust his friends.

Let’s not forget Anna. When we first meet her she is tearing a human body to pieces - one of many people we’ve been told that Anna has killed over the years. She is vicious and terrible but, we learn, she may not be evil. Complicated? You bet. But Blake deftly manages Anna’s evolution from angry, murderous spirit into someone you can sympathize with. Along with Cas and Anna, there is an interesting cast of secondary characters. New friends Tim and Carmel are opposites in the school heirarchy. One is awkward and dabbles in magic and the other is the school’s queen bee, but both are more than their reputations. Morfran, Will, Cas’s mother and their ghost sniffing cat Tybalt round out the eclectic group.

At times frightening, tragic, funny and creepy, Anna Dressed In Blood is a gripping read that you’ll have a hard time putting down. I look forward to Anna’s return in the sequel, Girl Of Nightmares, coming out next year.

For More Information about author, Kendare Blake, check out her website: http://www.kendareblake.com/


You can follow her on twitter: @kendareblake







If you liked this review, please come check out our other YA and younger book reviews at Read Now Sleep Later  and our adult book reviews at Nite Lite .

Thanks, Aly, for letting us guest post on your blog!

And thank you Thuy for stopping by and sharing your thoughts on Anna Dressed in Blood.  I can't wait to pick up a copy, but I will definitely be reading this one with the lights on. :-)

Valentine's Week Guest Post: The Men of Maud Hart Lovelace

For those of you not familiar with Maud Hart Lovelace, what’s the matter with you? I mean…she is the wonderful author of the Deep Valley books – which include the ten-book Betsy-Tacy series, Carney’s House Party, Winona’s Pony Cart, and the stand-alone book Emily of Deep Valley.

The early Betsy books tell of a picnic filled childhood, friendships, and frolics on the Big Hill. Once the books reach the high school years, we get to pretty dresses, the dances and above all else, the beaus. Right there you know this is not your typical YA because boys are called beaus. So romantic! These books take place circa 1905-1917 and the men of Deep Valley, the fictional town where the books are mostly set, are well-dressed (think: suits), well-coifed (think: shining pompadours), and well-mannered (think: they’re as likely to bring flowers to the mothers as to the daughters).

Here’s a rundown of some of the men of Deep Valley (and beyond). Don’t tell my husband, but I’m in love with one or two of them myself.

The Betsy-Tacy books:
Tony Markham – The Tall Dark and Handsome one
Tony might possibly have been my first book crush. He’s good looking, funny, can sing, and is just a little bit bad (he smokes cigarettes and hops trains to the Twin Cities to watch baseball games). He’s the one your mother warned you about, but can’t help liking herself.

Joe Willard – The Elusive
Joe is gorgeous, independent and too stubborn for his own good. It’s too easy to hurt Joe’s feelings, which is why Betsy can never land him. Never say never though. The fourth high school book is called Betsy and Joe, and the blond man on the cover of Betsy’s Wedding looks awfully familiar.

Phil Brandish – The Snob
He's rich, drives a car in 1908 when many people have never even seen one, and thinks a lot of himself. But he’s polite, refined and if he could just find where he left his sense of humour, he might be all right.

Uncle Rudy & Mr. Ray – The Debonairs
When Betsy spends Christmas with her best friend Tib in Milwaukee, Tib’s Uncle Rudy steals her heart with his waxed mustaches, dancing, and tickets to the theater on a Sunday!

Mr. Ray is Betsy’s father and if you’re looking for upstanding, loyal, and someone who loves his family, look no further. Even as his circumference grows in middle age, he still cleans up nicely and is the most debonair man at the Melborn Hotel dances.

Marco Regali – The Romantic
Marco is the Italian young man who falls in love with Betsy in Venice. He calls her Bette, throws roses through her bedroom window, and takes her on ferry rides to islands where they picnic until sunset. Yeah, Marco is as good as he sounds.

Sam Hutchinson – The Loveable one
Sam is the romantic lead in Carney’s House Party, a book told from the point of view of Betsy’s friend, Caroline Sibley (Carney). He’s the jolly, loveable, nice to kids, kind of guy and while I didn’t fall in love with him myself, I can see why others might. To me, he makes the perfect friend though.

Emily of Deep Valley is a stand-alone book and while Betsy and some of her friends make brief appearances, they’re not really part of the story.

Don Walker – The Cad
Oh, don’t get me started. Emily likes him…a lot. But why? Oh, sure, she can really talk to him. But only when it suits him. And only when her beautiful cousin isn’t around. Run, Em, run! And I’m not giving anything away, as the reader can tell this from the very beginning, even if Emily can’t!

Jed Wakefield – The Forward Thinker
Jed is all for a social cause and he’s thinking about America’s future. He’s got his own thoughts and opinions, but he also takes into account Emily’s beliefs, circumstances, and desires. He’s one you can count on. In a way, he’s a young Mr. Ray.

There are many more beaus and male friends in all of these books, but these are the main ones. The nice thing I’m always reminded of when I revisit Lovelace’s books is that while Betsy and her friends are often similar to boy-crazy girls a hundred years later, there is always an underlying theme of girl-power too. The books ring with these messages: be true to yourself, study hard, go to college, be loyal to your friends, don’t compromise your beliefs, make something of yourself, be socially, spiritually, and politically aware, don’t settle, and follow your dreams. And all those messages are mixed in with pretty dresses, dances, and beaus.

Joëlle Anthony is the author of the young adult novel, Restoring Harmony, and her second book, The Right & the Real will be released in April 2012. Visit her website at 

http://joelleanthony.com/

You can also find her on twitter: @joellewrites

Valentine's Week Guest Post: Bad Boys With A Good Heart

When it comes to book crushes, I’m definitely more of a hero girl. I mean, come on! How can any self-respecting girl not love Peeta? Or Po? Or Jem? Or Sam? Yeah… *wistful sighs* I love them…
But every once in a while, a bad boy will come around and sweep me right off my feet.

Not just any bad boy, though. He has to have a good heart. One that is not buried too deep… *cough* Will *cough* (Although, I totally trust that his good heart will eventually show. Eventually.)

I started thinking about bad boys that I love, though, and came up with a very short list, so I turned to my friends on Twitter for help…

The most common bad boy (with three votes) was Patch from Hush, Hush. I’ve yet to read this one, so I’m going off what I’ve heard. Bad boy? Yes. Good heart? Not so sure…

Some of the other ones were Gerard Tarrant from the Coldfire Trilogy (Had to google him, but I am so reading this!), Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (old school, but yes!), and the “bad faerie dude from Paranormalcy” (I suppose I could look up his name for you, but I like what Wendy said).

My friend Kristina  replied that her favorite bad boys are her two sons. She’s joking. Really. She is. Well, I think she is… At least they’re cute bad boys with good hearts!

This leads me to my two favorite bad boys:

Cole from Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

When I first opened Linger and saw Cole’s name in the chapter heading, I closed the book. Seriously. I wanted Grace and Sam. I mean, really, Sam is just amazing! Why doesn’t he just have his own book! So when I saw Cole’s name, I refused the read the book. I couldn’t bear to open it again. Cole already had one strike against him simply by being in the book. I didn’t want the intrusion. I was right. When I finally decided to give it a try, I hated Cole. With a passion. He was a bad boy, and try as I might, I could not see a good heart.

This is one of the things I adore about Maggie’s writing, however: her characters are so rich and complex. By the end of the book, Cole had me eating out of his hands. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he did, in fact, finally show his good heart. There is a certain scene in the end of Linger that made me cry and solidified the fact that Cole does indeed have good heart (making me love him just as much as Sam). Now, I can’t wait to read Forever to find out where the bad boy thing came from. I mean, we have some clues, but… ;o)


And my all-time favorite Bad Boy with a Good Heart…

Jace from Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments

*sighs* Jace.

From the first time I saw the snarky golden boy take out a demon in Pandemonium, I was hooked. I mean sure, he wasn’t always the nicest person to Clary, but what do you expect from a boy who was taught at an extremely young age that “To love is to destroy” *heart breaks a little*? And he loved Clary. And he didn’t want to destroy her. And… And… Oh, there is so much more!

His childhood, his relationship with his father, was so complex. How could his character not be? But through it all, his love for Clary is right there.

And the boy really does have a good heart. You can see it seep out whenever his family and friends need him. You can see it in his fierce protectiveness over them.

You can see it in City of Ashes in a certain scene on a certain boat with a certain character who also loves Clary. If there was ever any doubt as to his good heart, what he did in that room, what he said to that character, is more than enough proof.

Yes. Jace is a bad boy… But at least he has a good heart! :o)

(I want to give a shout out to by #FoobaConJace girls… Fellow Jace (and bacon) lovers Di [www.twitter.com/dianapaz_], Tina [www.twitter.com/tinalynn_], and Erica [www.twitter.com/ericamchapman]. Yes. We share Jace. And bacon.)


So who are your favorite bad boys? Do they have good hearts?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Janelle Alexander loves to read and write, especially YA. And she loves to crush on fictional characters. And she is as jealous of all of you in your fabulously cold snow as you are of her in her stupid, hot sun. You can find her on Twitter (@janellealexandr), her personal blog (janellealexander.blogspot.com), or her group blog (DNAwriters.blogspot.com).

Valentine's Week Guest Post: Hot Boys With Accents

‘Ello, Sexy.

The first time I fell in love I was in Orlando, Florida. He had dropped something while walking out of a restaurant, and being the good Southern girl that I am, I picked it up and handed it back to him. He gave me a brilliant smile and replied, “Cheers, Love.”

That was it. I was smitten. Sure, he was an over-weight, bald man old enough to be my father, but that accent. Being from the backwoods of Kentucky, it was my first real life exposure to a British accent, and it was the most beautiful sound in the whole world to my ears.

To this day, I’m still entranced by a good accent. A guy can go from fairly average to steaming hot in two seconds flat with the addition of an Irish brogue. Even in books, I’m drawn to characters with accents I can only hear in my head. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve put together a list of my five favorite boys with accents in YA literature.

Carlos Fuentes from Simone Elkeles’ Rules of Attraction. I liked Alex, really I did, but it was his brother Carlos who stole my heart. There was no way Kira could have resisted when the Mexican bad boy said, “I dare you.”

Étienne St. Claire from Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French Kiss. What could be more perfect than a boy with a French name and British accent? After reading Anna and the French Kiss, I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is “not a single thing.”

George Weasley from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Yes, there are tons of guys with accents to choose from in the Harry Potter series (like Professor Snape who can read the phone book to me any day of the week), but the Weasley twins win my affection. How can you not love the fun-loving gingers? Well, I suppose I mean the fun-loving ginger… We miss you, Fred.

Jem Carstairs from Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. I like Jem. He’s smart and sensitive and plays the violin. How cool is that? Okay, so the whole Bleached Boy thing creeps me out a little. (I know a woman who is silver because of her “medicine”. Trust me on this, it’s not pretty.) But looks aren’t everything, right? Especially when you’re a half-British, half-Chinese Shadowhunter who grew up in Shanghai and now lives in England. What I wouldn’t give to hear him speak.

Image from Just One More Freak Deviant Art

Will Herondale from Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. You thought I was going full-on Team Jem there didn’t you? Don’t be so naïve. I couldn’t choose just one Shadowhunter even if I was being held at claw-point by a demon. Will isn’t just beautiful and British, but also tortured. And if there is anything I love more than a boy with an accent, it’s a boy with angst.

How about you? What are your favorite fictional boys with accents? And what accents are certain to make a guy’s hotness level raise a few points in your book?

Miss Tammy is the Young Adult Services Coordinator for a public library system in Kentucky. When she's not reading, writing, or cataloging books, she's sleeping. Being from Kentucky she has no accent whatsoever.