Interview with Laura Taylor Namey for The Library of Lost Things

The Library of Lost Things

by Laura Taylor Namey
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Release date: October 8th 2019
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Books about Books

Synopsis:

From the moment she first learned to read, literary genius Darcy Wells has spent most of her time living in the worlds of her books. There, she can avoid the crushing reality of her mother’s hoarding and pretend her life is simply ordinary. But when a new property manager becomes more active in the upkeep of their apartment complex, the only home Darcy has ever known outside of her books suddenly hangs in the balance.

While Darcy is struggling to survive beneath the weight of her mother’s compulsive shopping, Asher Fleet, a former teen pilot with an unexpectedly shattered future, walks into the bookstore where she works…and straight into her heart. For the first time in her life, Darcy can’t seem to find the right words. Fairy tales are one thing, but real love makes her want to hide inside her carefully constructed ink-and-paper bomb shelter.

Still, after spending her whole life keeping people out, something about Asher makes Darcy want to open up. But securing her own happily-ever-after will mean she’ll need to stop hiding and start living her own truth—even if it’s messy.

Can you briefly describe THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS and its characters? 

Thank you for having me! THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS opens with Darcy’s home life and family situation, which is difficult and often frustrating. Darcy lives with a mother who is a hoarder and compulsive shopper. She loves her mother so much, in fact she is the only person in Mom’s life who hasn’t abandoned her. Still, Darcy has felt shame since she was little. She feels it’s easier to become “invisible” than try to reconcile and show the “messy” parts of her life and family. She’s often so pressed that books become more than an escape: they turn into an emotional obsession. This results in a high school senior who has lived out many milestone moments within pages, within the happy endings of other book heroines. 

When her mother’s disorder escalates, and when a new, more involved apartment manager shows up and a lease renewal looms, Darcy’s home is in jeopardy. Her relationship with her mother is strung on a tightrope. Darcy realizes she must leave the comfort of her home library before she loses her mom forever.  

Yet, it’s not just a hoarding mother who needs new coping strategies. With the help of her best friend, Marisol, and a recent graduate who is a new fixture in her bookstore, Darcy sees all of the things she’s lost to hoarding and sacrificed to hiding. She tries to leave the pages and live her life, not Jane Eyre’s. Not Elizabeth Bennet’s. Even if it’s messy. 

Who would you say is your favourite character from the story and why? 

I absolutely love Darcy’s half Mexican, half Cuban best friend, Marisol. She is a mash-up of me and my personality (I’m Cuban-American) and my Mexican best friend, Marisol is a fellow foodie, and is rarely without her signature leather jacket. She was so fun to write and I love the loyal friendship between Darcy and Marisol.  

How did the story occur to you? Did you find inspiration anywhere? 

I have always been a bit like Darcy, using books and their worlds to escape from stress or hard times. For my own book, I asked myself the questions, what would it look like if a teen girl took this coping mechanism to new extremes? And what is it about her life that would prompt her to do this? The Library of Lost Things came right from these thoughts. 

If you could choose one song to describe your book, which one would it be? 

Glitter in the Air, by Pink 

If your book was going to be made into a movie, who would play your characters?

Emma Stone is actually my model for Darcy, so she would be perfect! Asher has always looked like a younger Chase Crawford in my mind. And my own teen daughter could play Marisol in a couple of years. 

Fall is here, and we love to find a cosy place to read our favourite books. What drink and place do you think will go with your book to have a perfect book date? 

It has to be a Viennese coffee from a place that’s actually in the real North Park San Diego neighbourhood where Darcy’s indie bookstore lives: Caffe Calabria. This shop makes an appearance in my book, too. 

Can you recommend your readers any other books in case they are left hungry for more once they finish THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS? 

Readers of THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS will really enjoy HEARTS, STRINGS, and OTHER BREAKABLE THINGS by Jacqueline Firkins. 

What’s next for you? 

I have a Cuban own voices YA coming Fall 2020 from Atheneum Simon and Schuster, and a secret untitled project coming after that, also from S&S. Find out more by visiting my Goodreads page!

Laura is a Cuban-American Californian who can be found haunting her favorite coffee shops, drooling over leather jackets, and wishing she was in London or Paris. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two superstar children.

This former teacher writes young adult novels about quirky teens learning to navigate life and love. Her debut, THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS will be published 10/08/19 from Inkyard Press/HarperCollins. Her #ownvoices sophomore project, A CUBAN GIRL'S GUIDE TO SWEATERS AND STARS is coming fall 2020 from Atheneum Simon and Schuster.

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Interview with Laura E. Weymouth for A Treason of Thorns

A Treason of Thorns

by Laura E. Weymouth
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: September 10th 2019
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Synopsis:

Violet Sterling has spent the last seven years in exile, longing to return to Burleigh House. One of the six great houses of England, Burleigh’s magic always kept the countryside well. And as a child, this magic kept Violet happy, draping her in flowers while she slept, fashioning secret hiding places for her, and lighting fires on the coldest nights to keep her warm.

Everything shattered, though, when her father committed high treason trying to free Burleigh from the king’s oppressive control. He was killed, and Vi was forced into hiding.

When she’s given a chance to go back, she discovers Burleigh has run wild with grief. Vines and briars are crumbling the walls. Magic that once enriched the surrounding countryside has turned dark and deadly, twisting lush blooms into thorns, poisoning livestock and destroying crops. Burleigh’s very soul is crying out in pain.

Vi would do anything to help, and soon she finds herself walking the same deadly path as her father all those years before. Vi must decide how far she’s willing to go to save her house—before her house destroys everything she’s ever known.

Content warnings are available via the author's website.

Can you briefly describe A TREASON OF THORNS and its characters? 

A Treason of Thorns is the story of Violet Sterling, the dispossessed daughter of a treasonous nobleman, who’s given the opportunity to return to her ancestral home after her father’s death. But Violet’s home, Burleigh House, is no ordinary English manor—it’s one of five Great Houses, ancient and sentient places of power that govern and guard the health and wellbeing of the land. Vi loves Burleigh House and Burleigh is devoted to her, but when she does return, she soon realizes that her House is, in fact, slowly dying. That could have very serious ramifications for the surrounding countryside, so Vi is faced with the difficult decision of risking everything to save her House, or putting it down, as many people believe she should. 

Who would you say is your favourite character from the story and why? 

Burleigh House, because it was so much fun as a writer to get to write both setting and character at once, and to convey emotion and information through things normally viewed as set-dressing. 

How did the story occur to you? Did you find inspiration anywhere? 

A lot of disparate pieces came together to form A Treason of Thorns, but the very earliest seed was a microfiction I wrote on Twitter, about a girl sitting in an enchanted garden, waiting to entertain an unwanted suitor. 

If you could choose one song to describe your book, which one would it be? 

Burning House, by Cam. No contest. 

If your book was going to be made into a movie, who would play your characters?

Aaaaaaah, I’m honestly terrible at fan-casting! But there’s a Dutch model, Luca Hollestelle, who IS Violet Sterling in my head. I’ve never pictured her any other way. That’s the only person I have a super clear vision of in Treason, though. 

Fall is almost here, and we love to find a cosy place to read our favourite books. What drink and place do you think will go with your book to have a perfect book date? 

I mean, I think you’d have the IDEAL reading experience if you could bring the book to one of the inns around Taunton, Somerset, and have a glass or two of scrumpy while you read. Since that’s a little cost-prohibitive for most North American readers, I’d recommend reading it outside under a tree on a crisp and sunny fall afternoon with a thermos of cider. Preferably near where someone’s burning brush, so you get the benefit of the smell of woodsmoke. 

Can you recommend your readers any other books in case they are left hungry for more once they finish A TREASON OF THORNS? 

Well, obviously I have to recommend my first book, The Light Between Worlds, which is the story of two sisters struggling to deal with the aftermath of coming back to our world after having a portal fantasy in another. It’s about loss and longing and belonging, and is another excellent fall read. If you’re looking specifically for Gothic vibes, like A Treason of Thorns will provide for you, I recommend either The House of Salt and Sorrow by Erin Craig (a wind-swept, remote retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses) or Beneath the Haunting Sea by Joanna Meyer (which I have occasionally described as the love child of The Secret Garden and The Silmarillion.) 

What’s next for you? 

A nap! And then work on a number of projects I can’t talk about quite yet!

Laura Weymouth is a Canadian living in exile in America, and the sixth consecutive generation of her family to immigrate from one country to another. Born and raised in the Niagara region of Ontario, she now lives at the edge of the woods in western New York, along with her husband, two wild-hearted daughters, a spoiled cat, an old soul of a dog, and an indeterminate number of chickens. She is represented by the inimitable Lauren Spieller of TriadaUS.

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[Spotlight + Giveaway] The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven

The Exact Opposite of Okay (Izzy O'Neill #1)

by Laura Steven
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: June 11th 2019

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Feminism

Synopsis:

Bitingly funny and shockingly relevant, The Exact Opposite of Okay is a bold, brave, and necessary read for fans of Louise O'Neill and Jennifer Mathieu. 

Eighteen-year-old Izzy O’Neill knows exactly who she is—a loyal friend, an aspiring comedian, and a person who believes that milk shakes and Reese’s peanut butter cups are major food groups. But after she’s caught in a compromising position with the son of a politician, it seems like everyone around her is eager to give her a new label: slut.

Izzy is certain that the whole thing will blow over and she can get back to worrying about how she doesn’t reciprocate her best friend Danny’s feelings for her and wondering how she is ever going to find a way out of their small town. Only it doesn’t.

And while she’s used to laughing her way out of any situation, as she finds herself first the center of high school gossip and then in the middle of a national scandal, it's hard even for her to find humor in the situation.

Izzy may be determined not to let anyone else define who she is, but that proves easier said than done when it seems like everyone has something to say about her.

Hello

Look, you probably bought this book because you heard about how I’m an impoverished orphan at the heart of a national slut-shaming scandal, and you thought, Oh, great, this is just the kind of heart-wrenching tale I need to feel better about my own life, but seriously, you have to relax. I am not some pitiful Oliver-Twist-meets-Kim-Kardashian type figure. If you’re seeking a nice cathartic cry, I’m not your girl. May I recommend binge-watching some sort of medical drama for the level of secondhand devastation you’re looking for.

Either that or you saw the nudes, which, y’know. Most people have. My lopsided boobs have received more press attention than your average international epidemic, which I bet the supervirus population is furious about. All that hard work attempting to destroy the human race gone unnoticed.

But here it is, the unvarnished account of everything that went down my senior year, taken straight from the journal entries on my blog. Which is a big win for me because putting this together for you was practically no work on my part. When in doubt, always do the least amount of work possible, in order to preserve energy for important things like laughing and sex.

Don’t look at me like that. This is a book about a sex scandal, did you really expect me to be a nun and/or the Virgin Mary?

Continue reading here.

Laura Steven is an author, journalist and screenwriter from the northernmost town in England. The Exact Opposite of Okay, her YA debut, was published by Egmont in March 2018. The sequel, A Girl Called Shameless, will follow in 2019.

As well as mentoring aspiring authors through schemes like Pitch Wars, Laura works for Mslexia, a non-profit organisation supporting women writers. She graduated with Distinction from her MA in Creative Writing in 2017, and her TV pilot Clickbait – a mockumentary about journalists at a viral news agency – was a finalist in British Comedy's 2016 Sitcom Mission. 

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Laura is represented by Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary and Media Inc.

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