Guest Post: Kalynn Bayron

Creating a Cinderella Retelling

Cinderella Is Dead is the story of 16-year-old Sophia Grimmins, a young girl living in the kingdom of Mersailles—this is the place where Cinderella lived and died 200 years before. Cinderella’s story has become the backbone of this society, and young women are expected to follow in her footsteps by attending the now mandatory, annual ball, to be chosen by prospective suitors. This kingdom has used Cinderella’s story to manipulate and control the women and girls who reside there. As Sophia is preparing to attend the ball she grapples with how this story doesn’t speak to who she is. She’s in love with her best friend, Erin, she doesn’t want to be married, and she watches the people around her fail to help her at every possible opportunity. The ball is a turning point for Sophia. She makes some decisions that put her on a collision course with Mersaille’s ruler, and in the process she uncovers some earth shattering truths about Cinderella, Prince Charming, and the fairy godmother.

There are versions of what would become Cinderella that date back hundreds, even thousands, of years. In preparation for writing my own retelling, I read the many stories that came before the version we’re now familiar with; the Brothers Grimm version from 1812, the Charles Perrault version from 1607, and the story of Ye Xian from around 850 AD first published in the Tang dynasty compilation Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written around 850 by Duan Chengshi. Around the first century AD, the story of Rhodopis was popularized. It’s about a Greek woman living in Egypt whose sandal is carried off by a bird and dropped in the lap of the Pharaoh who then sets out to find the owner of the shoe. And there is a similar story recorded five centuries before, by Herodotus in his Histories. This version eludes to at least a part of the story being an account of a real life event. Through all of its iterations, over the passage of so many hundreds and hundreds of years, common threads can still be found, the most prominent being a young girl mistreated by other women in her own family is saved by a prince or king and lives happily ever after. 

One of the reasons I wrote this story was because I really enjoy a retelling that makes me rethink earlier versions of the tale. Wicked (more so the stage production than the novel) is one of my favorite retellings. It did so much more than simply rework The Wizard of Oz. It opened up the world around it and ultimately made me see the Wicked Witch in an entirely new light. She was a one dimensional villain in one story and something completely different in another. That’s what I wanted to do with Cinderella Is Dead. I wanted to approach this retelling in a way that would make readers question everything they thought they knew about the Cinderella story.



Cinderella is highly visible in the pantheon of children’s tales. That’s Cinderella’s castle at Disneyworld! Her blue dress and glass slippers are iconic. I wanted to retell a story that was instantly recognizable and deconstruct it in a way that centered the kinds of people who are nowhere to be found in the story itself, mainly Black, queer people. I wrote this story that explores not only how fairy tales have the power to personally affect who we become, but also allows us to see this fairytale world through the eyes of a young woman who is actively harmed by the societal norms the fairytale perpetuates. It’s a continuation of the story and a kind of expanding of that already established framework. Because this is a bit more of a reimagining than a retelling, I kept the entire Cinderella story intact but with the idea of it being a sacred, historical text and ultimately a piece of propaganda used to further the will of this kingdom’s rulers. When my main character Sophia is navigating this world there are callbacks to Cinderella herself, Prince Charming, the fairy Godmother, the ball, but as she begins to uncover the truth, we pull back and see the bigger picture—that all that glitters isn’t gold.

Storytelling is fluid. It’s constantly evolving, stories are constantly changing. Even a story’s origins can change through retelling. Things become canon that weren’t before. Other elements are cast aside in favor of new ideas. I think that’s what I’m trying to do—changing stories in a way that allows me and my readers to have access to them in a way we didn’t before. 

Wow - I love this. And I really can't wait to read this story! 

Plus, it's perfect for the summer reading theme this year of Imagine Your Story. 

About the Book:
Title: Cinderella is Dead
Author: Kalynn Bayron
Publisher: Bloomsbury YA

This fresh take on a classic story will make readers question the tales they’ve been told, and root for girls to break down the constructs of the world around them.


About the Author:
Kalynn Bayron is an author and classically trained vocalist. She grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. When she’s not writing you can find her listening to Ella Fitzgerald on loop, attending the theater, watching scary movies, and spending time with her kids. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas with her family.

My Favorite Performances by Child Actors a Guest Post from Lygia Day Peñaflor

From Little House to Fresh Off the Boat: My Favorite Performances by Child Actors

by Lygia Day Peñaflor

In Unscripted Joss Byrd, Joss’s manager tells her to watch the 1973 movie Paper Moon to study Tatum O’Neal’s Oscar-winning performance. This serves as the gold standard of acting for Joss, and the film provides her with comfort and courage during tough times. In addition to Paper Moon, here are my other favorite performances by child actors (in no particular order):

Mae Whitman as “Bernice Pruitt” in Hope Floats

Fred Savage and Danica McKellar as “Kevin &Winnie” in The Wonder Years

Hudson Yang as “Eddie Huang” in Fresh Off the Boat

Melissa Gilbert as “Laura Ingalls” in Little House on the Prairie

Sara Gilbert as “Darlene Conner” in Rosanne

Quvenzhané Wallis as “Hushpuppy” in Beasts of the Southern Wild

Abigail Breslin as “Olive Hoover” in Little Miss Sunshine

Ricky Schroder as “T.J.” in The Champ

River Phoenix as “Chris Chambers” in Stand by Me

Todd Bridges as “Solomon” in Little House on the Prairie

Ke Huy Quan as “Short Round” in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Corey Haim as “Lucas Bly” in Lucas

Oona Laurence as “Leila Hope” in Southpaw

Jacob Tremblay as “Jack” in Room

UNSCRIPTED JOSS BYRD by Lygia Day Peñaflor

On sale August 23, 2016

Roaring Brook Press

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this affecting debut novel, a child actor struggles to find herself on a film set where only one thing matters: getting the money shot.

Joss Byrd is America's most celebrated young actress, and her next project is a hot new Indie film helmed by a renowned, charismatic director. But on the set of The Locals, Joss's life is far from glamorous. Her mother is domineering and relentless, her dyslexia makes it difficult to keep up with the constantly changing script, the boy playing her older brother doesn't seem to reciprocate Joss's crush, and the film's gritty subject matter terrifies her. Yet none of these things appear to matter to Joss's agent, director, or even her mother. Joss is just a cash cow, and no one cares what she has to do for the perfect shot-as long as she gets it somehow.

Author Lygia Day Peñaflor's draws on her firsthand experience as a private academic teacher for young Hollywood stars in this affecting debut novel that explores the many demands made on young actors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lygia Day Peñaflor attended the Sarah Lawrence College Writers Seminar and received a scholarship to Southampton Writers Conference based on this manuscript. A graduate of Boston University and Columbia Teachers College, she is a private academic teacher for young Hollywood stars. Her students have included the young casts of Gossip Girl and Boardwalk Empire as well as Jay-Z's reboot of Annie. She lives on Long Island.

VIP Battle of the Bands Blog Tour

Best Boy Bands by Jen Calonita

Author of the VIP series. Battle of the Bands, the second book, is out now.

I loved this book, you can read my review here.

Writing a middle grade series about a girl who gets to go on the road with her favorite boy band when her mom gets a job with them wasn't a stretch for me. It was my life-long dream for me. When I was Mackenzie's age, my bedroom walls were wallpapered with posters of New Kids on the Block. My drawers were filled with NKOTB t-shirts, and my bed had a New Kids comforter and sheet set. My heart though, only belonged to one band member, Joey McIntrye. I slept on a pillowcase with his face on it for years. 

When I grew up and got to interview Joey for my magazine, it was the first time I was ever really starstruck. I could barely speak. All I could think was: "We were imaginary married and now I'm sitting and talking to you." 

I was a bit more composed when I met my second favorite band, 'NSync. I loved getting to hang with the guys backstage before a few concerts to report on the shenanigans for work and I loved their music. Whenever the opportunity came up to do something with 'Nsync, I practically begged to be assigned the gig. I flew to Toronto to interview Joey Fatone and Lass Bass on the set of their movie, interviewed Joey on Broadway and got to hang with all the guys before concerts. 

One of my favorite pictures from my Teen People days is one of me with the guys (I still use it for school visits). If I had to list other bands I loved, none would come close to NKOTB or 'Nsync, but I did like Backstreet Boys, and I routinely run to One Direction tunes. I have a feeling once you fall for a boy band your heart always belongs to them. At least mine does. I can't wait to see which boy band my heart falls for next. 

Do you have a favorite boy band? Let us know in the comments! 

Guest Post with CORI MCCARTHY

Welcome Cori!

Let's talk books!  Name your top 5 favorite YA Novels:

5. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. Now I know what you’re thinking: That’s not YA! But poetry has no age-specific market. When I was in high school, I kept a secret copy of Leaves of Grass in my leather Bible case when I had to go to church. I feel as though that anecdote says just about everything you need to know about me J

4. Graceling by Kristin Cashore. This book! AH! So, I absolutely love that Katsa is a sword-wielding survivor, but I also just think this is one of the best love stories that has been written in the last twenty years. Cashore takes her time in revealing how feelings spring up even through the rockiest of soil, and how true love has no respect for good intentions.

3. The Lumateer Chronicles by Melina Marchetta. This is technically three books (Finnikin of the Rock, Froi of the Exiles, Quintana of Charyn), but they create one unbelievable story of a feudal world where love and gender roles and desperate survival are all one tangled, breathtaking, high stakes cord. I fell for every single character in these books—even the “bad guys.” Also, the titles of these books might set off high fantasy alarms, but I assure you that these stories are accessible to non-fantasy readers. Give them a try; you won’t be sorry. Promise.

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. This story speaks to me. I mean, really, it whispers into my ear about how you have to be strong. You have to face down all the personal injustices of the world and make your own way. Your own stand. I needed this story when I was fourteen and newly heartbroken, and I need even more now as a thirty-one year-old. Jane Eyre proves that the world is not fair, and good people are often punished for trust and vision. But that’s not the end of it! After a good trek across the moors, you can handle anything—like Jane.

1. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (again!). This novel confused me for forty pages, and then it broke my heart into a million shiny pieces before placing them all back together again. If you started this story and didn’t get through the first few chapters, try again, and give in to the confusion. This book sets up a world and then turns it all upside down in the best way. It is one of the most hard-hitting coming of age stories, and Melina Marchetta is (in my humble opinion) the best YA writer currently out there.

About the Book:

Breaking Sky

Sourcebooks Fire

March 2015 ● ISBN: 9781492601418

Hardcover/$16.99 ● Ages 14+

Fly to the last drop of fuel. Fight to the last drop of blood.

Showoff. Reckless. Maverick. Chase Harcourt, call sign “Nyx”, isn’t one to play it safe. In the year 2048, America is locked in a cold war – and the country’s best hope is the elite teen fighter pilots of the United Star Academy. Chase is one of only two daredevil pilots chosen to fly an experimental “Streaker” jet. But few know the pain and loneliness of her past. All anyone cares about is that Chase aces the upcoming Streaker trials, proving the prototype jet can knock the enemy out of the sky.

But as the world tilts toward war, Chase cracks open a military secret. There’s a third Streaker, whose young hotshot pilot, Tristan, can match her on the ground and in the clouds. And Chase doesn’t play well with others. But to save her country, she may just have to put her life in the hands of the competition.

CORI MCCARTHY studied poetry and screenwriting before falling in love with writing for teens at Vermont College of Fine Arts. From a military family, Cori was born on Guam and lived a little bit of everywhere before she landed in Michigan. Learn more about her books at CoriMcCarthy.com.

Praise for Breaking Sky:

“Strong characterizations, action, adventure, and emotion combine to produce a sci-fi novel that is more than just the sum of its parts.” —School Library Journal STARRED Review

“Smart, exciting, confident—and quite possibly the next Big Thing.” —Kirkus Reviews

“McCarthy deploys breath-stopping depictions of high-stakes piloting with enviable ease, and the in-your-face personal confrontations are nearly as taut.” —Publishers Weekly

Buy Links:

Great Lakes Book and Supply – Cori McCarthy’s Local Indie! Pre-order here and receive a personalized signed copy.

Amazon Apple BAM B&N Chapters Indiebound Kobo

Guest Post: Patty Blount

I'm excited to have a special guest Patty Blount talking about an important issue on learning the truth before speaking and the dangers of internet attackers. 

Among the deepest pain I’ve ever felt in my life is being unfairly judged and punished for something I never did by someone I trusted, someone who should have known me better. It hurt so much, I wasn’t sure I’d survive. I kept asking myself how anyone who knew me could think me capable of this. 

Thankfully, the internet did not factor into this particular trial. Imagining that sort of condemnation by hundreds of people who do not know me is a form of torture, I’m certain of it.

This is precisely how main character Grace suffers in Some Boys. After she’s attacked by sports celebrity Zac McMahon at a party, her friends, most of the school, and her parents don’t fully believe her side of the story. Worse, complete strangers enter the debate online, after her attacker posts an incriminating video. 

As I write this post, the internet has been lit up with news of the tragedy that occurred when race car driver Tony Stewart hit and killed another driver, who’d left his wrecked car. Internet users forget that they’re posting about people with feelings, people who may be experiencing guilt we can’t even imagine. They forget that they do not have all the facts in hand and are rushing to judge—to pile more guilt on top of what people are already trying to cope with because it’s just so easy to step onto that virtual soap box. 

Also as I write this post, news of comedian Robin Williams’s death has just reached me. In my favorite role as John Keating in Dead Poets Society, Williams said, “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

Some Boys is sadly a story inspired by too many real news events. If my words and ideas can change the world, I fervently hope they will help encourage readers of this book to practice internet restraint the next time something happens in real life that compels them to take sides, to unfairly criticize or condemn someone simply because everyone else is doing it, or to shame them for something that was not their fault. 

***

Some girls say no. Some boys don’t listen.

When Grace meets Ian, she’s afraid. Afraid he’ll reject her like the rest of the school, like her own family. After she accuses Zac, the town golden boy, of rape, everyone turns against her. Ian wouldn't be the first to call her a slut and a liar.

Except Ian doesn’t reject her. He’s the one person who looks past the taunts and the names and the tough-girl act to see the real Grace. He’s the one who gives her the courage to fight back.

He’s also Zac’s best friend.

Patty Blount works as a software technical writer by day and novelist by night. Dared by her 13-year-old son to try fiction, Patty wrote her first manuscript in an ice rink. A short version of her debut novel, Send, finished in the top ten of the Writer's Digest 79th Annual Writing Competition.

Guest Post: Ted Goeglein

From the author of Cold Fury and the upcoming Flicker and Burn - out August 20th. I really enjoy these books featuring the Chicago mob, danger, and lots of action. Welcome Ted!

Hiding in Plain Sight 
Sometimes the best way to preserve a place is for the general public to ignore it. If enough years pass and a location doesn’t alter its appearance too much, people get used to it to the point of invisibility.
 
Throughout the COLD FURY trilogy, I use many real Chicago locations that have existed for decades. Few rival the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge for pure, undiluted criminal history.
 
Originally opened in 1907, The Green Mill was secretly owned by Al Capone less than twenty years later. In FLICKER & BURN, I mention a thug named ‘Machine Gun’ Jack McGurn who served as Capone’s chief enforcer. He was an Outfit killer who enjoyed his work, pressing a nickel into the hands of his victims as a trademark.
 
Although unproven, it’s believed that McGurn planned and carried out the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on February 14^th, 1929, when seven members of a rival gang were lined up and shot, execution style. As a reward for being such a skillful murderer, Capone gave McGurn part ownership of the Green Mill. The place became renowned for Jazz and the famous musicians who performed there.
 
Capone was sent to jail in 1932 and McGurn’s end came soon afterward. On February 13, 1933 – one day before Valentine’s Day – he was gunned down in a bowling alley. A valentine card was pressed into one of his hands; the other held a single, cold nickel.
 
The Green Mill has lived on through a succession of owners who’ve barely changed a detail from McGurn’s day. The sign, bar, bandstand, booths, murals, and Jazz are the same as the day he died. Passing through the door is like drifting into 1927. Most Chicagoans don’t notice the Green Mill because it exists; if it were gone, the absence would be glaring.
 
It’s an apt metaphor for the criminal world that my protagonist, Sara Jane Rispoli, is a part of in FLICKER & BURN. The Chicago Outfit is here, there, everywhere, and nowhere, all at the same time. 

This just in...Ted's in Trouble. Again.

UNREMEMBERED Blog Tour: Guest Post

I'm SUPER happy to be a part of this tour as I adore Jessica's books. Her previous books are funny, sweet, and charming. This one is a little....different (but not in a bad way) I was lucky enough to find Unremembered in the mail a few months ago. Check out my thoughts on this fantastic book.

Brains, Brawns, and Beauty: Creating the “Perfect” Sci-Fi Heroine

By Jessica Brody

“Okay,” Cody says, his voice serious. “First of all, don’t talk to random people in bus stations. It’s sketchy. Especially given your . . . well, celebrity status.” 
“She asked me about the bus to San Francisco.”
“And secondly,”he continues, ignoring me, “and probably more important, um, hello? You speak Portuguese?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know? I heard you back there.”
“Heard me what?”
“Speaking Portuguese,” he clarifies, sounding exasperated. “To that woman.”I glance over his shoulder at the young woman in the blue dress. She’s taken the seat I just vacated. 
I think back to our conversation, suddenly hearing it differently in my memory.
“Você sabe quando o ônibus para São Francisco chega?”“
Cinco e quarenta e cinco.”
“I speak Portuguese?” I repeat Cody’s question.
“It would appear so.”

Some parents like to live vicariously through their children. I like to live vicariously through my book characters. In 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, I got to be a spoiled heiress, in My Life Undecided, I got to put all the decisions in my life up to a vote on the internet and now in Unremembered, I get to speak foreign languages, solve complex math problems in my head, run faster than a car, look like a supermodel, and read an entire book in less than three minutes.

Who is Seraphina? That is the question of the day.

But in my mind, the answer is easy. She’s Jason Bourne meets Sydney Bristow meets Heidi Klum. The perfect blend of brawns, beauty, and brains.  And I had more fun creating her than any of my other characters.

The scene above is when Seraphina first learns that she can speak Portuguese. Other languages will soon follow. As well as other unique skills. Just the idea of writing a story about a girl with superhuman abilities who gets to discover them along the way (because she has lost all memories of who she is) was such an exciting idea for me.

I mean, how many of us have ever fantasized about accidentally stumbling upon some mad skill we didn’t know we had. For me, personally, every time I try out a new sport, I’m convinced that I’m going to turn out to be some hidden prodigy that the U.S. Olympics team has been waiting to find for centuries. I’ll pick up a tennis racket, take one swing and reveal myself as the next Serena Williams. Or I’ll take a single ballet class and the next day a scout from the New York City ballet will be knocking at my door, wondering where I’ve been all his life.

Sadly, however, that has yet to happen. I’m not deterred, though! After all, I haven’t tried every sport. And once I do, I’m fully prepared to start up again with musical instruments.

But I know, I know, enough about me, the boring writer. Back to the book!

When I first sat down to brainstorm Seraphina as a character and what kind of abilities she has hidden, I went nuts. I’m talking total geek out moments complete with squeals and girlish giggles.

My list of “abilities” was like pages long. And each one made me giddier than the last. Of course, not all of these skills made it into the final book. Some of them—like flying and invisibility—were a bit much and sadly had to go. (Perhaps saved for my next trilogy.)

Nonetheless, I had a blast creating Seraphina in my mind. I got to take pieces from all my favorite kick-ass characters and blend them together. I literally set out to create the “perfect” human being.

Then came the hard part.

Going beyond the simple act of cutting and pasting together the perfect heroine and actually placing my amalgamation within a story. Giving her real emotions and real reactions and real conflicts. This was the part of the process when I got to ask the more serious questions. Questions like: “What would your life be like if you were perfect? And “What is perfection?”

Is it having the highest IQ? The prettiest face? The strongest muscles? All of the above? And what if the price for all those perfections was your own freedom? Your own free will? Suddenly life doesn’t seem so perfect anymore, does, it?

And how far can you push perfection before you reach the edge of humanity? Is it possible to modify someone to the point where they fall off that edge?

But yeah, back to the “fun” part. Here’s where we do a nod back to My Life Undecided and poll the audience. Which of Seraphina’s traits would you most like to have? Vote below!

And I hope you enjoy the book!

Poll:

survey software

Cool Links:

Unremembered Book Trailer

Read and download the first five chapters of Unremembered for free!

Become a fan of the Unremembered Trilogy on Facebook

Follow Jessica Brody on Twitter

Become a fan of Jessica Brody on Facebook

See Jessica Brody on tour!

Check out her website!

Lauren Willig: Guest Post and Giveaway

I adore the Pink Carnation series and I was thrilled to be asked to take part in the Garden Intrigue blog tour. Check out all the blog tour stops - courtesy of TLC Book Tours.  

Here's my review of The Garden Intrigue - which is fantastic.

Welcome Lauren!

I traveled a lot as a teenager.

From the squishy chair in the corner of the library, I traveled the silk road with Marco Polo and fled Atlanta with Scarlett O’Hara. I climbed the scaffold with Anne Boleyn and Mary, Queen of Scots; faced down English forces at Culloden; danced a quadrille with the Scarlet Pimpernel before slipping off to a back room to burn a secret message emblazoned with a small, scarlet flower. I can’t tell you how many times I was kidnapped and put into harems.(What was it with all those harems back in the early 90s?)

There’s nothing like historical fiction for getting around. Since writing my Pink Carnation series, I’ve gotten to travel—metaphorically, at least—all over the place. My intrepid Napoleonic spy team has been to Ireland, to India, to France.(And, of course, to Almack’s Assembly Rooms, without which no Regency romance novel would be complete.)I’ve gotten to hob-nob with George III, Sir Arthur Wellesley, Robert Fulton, and the members of the Naughty Hellfire Club, among others.

But my latest book, The Garden Intrigue, is special. It takes me back to a very particular place: Josephine Bonaparte’s country house, Malmaison. I had a bit of a Bonaparte thing when I was a teenager. I was fascinated by the fractious Bonaparte clan: the brilliant little dictator, his promiscuous sister Pauline, his rebellious brother Lucien, his scheming sister Caroline, his increasingly cranky mother. But the characters I loved the best were Napoleon’s wife Josephine, charming and weak, and her two children, Hortense and Eugene. I felt a deep kinship with Hortense, who, like me, went to a small all girls’ school, where she excelled in the humanities, drama, and music—and not so much on the math and science front. It all sounded pretty familiar, minus the whole Revolution bit.

 In the early days of Napoleon’s ascent, before he declared himself Emperor, Malmaison, Josephine’s country house, was home to a continuous house party, where amateur theatricals and games abounded. Even Napoleon himself took part in the fun—although Hortense, accused him of cheating. As Napoleon’s ambitions grew greater, that charmed circle at Malmaison took on darker overtones, with s favorite, forced into a marriage with Napoleon’s hypochondriac younger brother, Louis.

When I was eighteen, I wrote a novel about Hortense, called Napoleon’s Daughter. No one is ever going to see that novel—trust me, it’s for the best—but I did want to make my way back to Malmaison someday and revisit Hortense and her family.  In The Garden Intrigue, my heroine, Emma Morris, is an American, a New Yorker who came over to France with her uncle, James Monroe, as a teenager, and was enrolled in Mme Campan’s school for young ladies, where she became fast friends with Hortense—who helped her to elope with her dream man at the age of fifteen. As you can guess, Emma’s dream man turned out to be not quite so dreamy. Ten years later, she’s a widow and a fixture of the Paris social scene. She’s also still best friends with Hortense, but increasingly worried about Napoleon’s designs for Hortense and her family. The world is changing around Emma and she doesn’t like it one bit.

At a request from Napoleon, Emma returns to Malmaison for a house party, where she teams up with a ridiculous poet to write a masque for the new Emperor’s entertainment. She never suspects that that poet might be an English spy—or that her weekend at Malmaison might change her life forever.

 In writing The Garden Intrigue, I got to revisit all my old friends—and enemies—from the Napoleonic court, all the people I’d hung out with years ago while writing Napoleon’s Daughter. I couldn’t change Hortense’s story—history has an annoying way of being static like that—but I could give her make-believe best friend a happy ending.

 I like to think that Hortense would have approved.

I love reading historical fiction and visiting places through books, especially places from the Pink Carnation series.  As a special treat, TLC Book Tours has offered up one copy of The Garden Intrigue to one lucky person (US/Canada only)

To Enter:

Leave a comment on the blog with 

1. state which time period you'd like to travel to most

(mine's a toss up between Regency England and Renaissance Italy) 

2. your email address 

The contest ends Monday March 19th at midnight. 

Guest Post and Giveaway: Uma Krishnaswami

Why Bollywood?

I often get asked why I put Bollywood into this story. Am I a True Fan like Dini and Maddie? Did I admire a Bollywood star when I was young? Did I want to imagine my life as a movie? In short, no to all of the above. The term "Bollywood" hadn't even been invented when I was a kid!

I needed Dini to be passionate about something. It needed to be something with potential for tragedy and drama, humor, eccentricity, and hints of romance. What else could it possibly be? Dini had to be crazy about the kind of movie that is huge huge huge in India's popular culture, that the world now knows as the Bollywood movie.

It's always strange and funny when trends from India "hit" the West and suddenly get all kinds of media attention. That's what's happened with these movies, even though there's been a movie-making industry in India since the days of the silent films. I think that Dolly, the mega movie star in the book, probably doesn't care too much for the term "Bollywood." In a letter to her friend, she reveals that she's really a fan of classic Hindi films.

Here's a clip from an old Hindi movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdQwPwmsUC0

And here's something more recent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uIz1DFNJnY&feature=related

So what's the point to all this? Why take the pop culture of a country around the world from the United States and place it in a book for young American readers? Dini and her friend Maddie could have been connected by almost anything. They could be fans of a popular singer or a Hollywood actor. Well, one reason is that we don't have a lot of books that feature culturally grounded stories that are pure fun, so I wanted to turn the tables and have the hyphenated-American kid call the shots about what was cool. I also wanted a kind of wackiness factor, and nothing else can do that like these "fillums." Lucky for me, the popularity of these movies in the US and in many other countries (you really can get them with Arabic and Thai subtitles!) made it possible. Also the fact that the BFFs are Bollywood fans allows the story to stretch from here to India and back, and it allows the kind of cheery optimism that I was after. These movies are crazy and defy credibility but they have energy and the music is quite wonderful. And most of the time they have happy endings. Call me Pollyanna but in this world of ours, I feel a great need for happy endings.

*** Grand Giveaway***

Three lucky Grand Prize winners will each receive one copy of THE GRAND PLAN TO FIX EVERYTHING along with a starry assortment of bangles and trinkets that Dolly Singh, famous famous Bollywood movie star, would adore! An additional 3 runners-up will receive a copy of THE GRAND PLAN TO FIX EVERYTHING.

To enter, send an e-mail to GrandPlanGiveaway@gmail.com.

In the body of the e-mail, include your name, mailing address, and e-mail address (if you're under 13, submit a parent's name and e-mail address). One entry per person and prizes will only be shipped to US or Canadian addresses. Entries must be received by midnight (PDT) on 6/30/11. Winners will be selected in a random drawing on 7/1/11 and notified via email.

******

The next stop on the tour is The Drift Record at http://julielarios.blogspot.com/.

Check out my review

Check out Uma's blog: http://umakrishnaswami.blogspot.com/

Check out the book trailer: