Everybody Sees the Ants

Lucky Linderman didn't ask for his life. He didn't ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn't ask for a father who never got over it. He didn't ask for a mother who keeps pretending their dysfunctional family is fine. And he didn't ask to be the target of Nader McMillan's relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far. But Lucky has a secret--one that helps him wade through the daily mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos--the prison his grandfather couldn't escape--where Lucky can be a real man, an adventurer, and a hero. It's dangerous and wild, and it's a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside? Michael L. Printz Honor recipient A.S. King's smart, funny and boldly original writing shines in this powerful novel about learning to cope with the shrapnel life throws at you and taking a stand against it.

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The Boy Most Likely To

Seize the Tuesday is a book blogger meme created by Adi Alsaid and the Let’s Get Lost Buddies Street Team, to share stories about how we’ve seized the Tuesday, with a special focus on the particular book we're reading. We’ll post on as many Tuesdays as possible and share our posts online with the hashtag:#LetsAllGetLost. If you loved Let’s Get Lost then join the LGL Buddies on Facebook and help promote the book!

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Nil

An Ember in the Ashes

If you are not aware, I am currently on a book ban. It's not very strict, but I am not going on huge book hauls every month. (I actually have been cheating a bit...I'm sorry! ARCs just come!) Usually I allow myself to buy one book a month and I usually finish the book pretty quickly! I have actually been trying to get all the remaining 8 books on my shelf read by the end of May. The Fierce Reads tour will be at the middle of May and I will be hauling about *counts* 6 (Maybe 5) books! That is a good amount of books if you ask me. 2 which will be sequels and 4 (Maybe 3) that I haven't read. So! Here is a  list of books I will be for sure buying once my ban is lifted!

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Welcome to the Nobody's Goddess blog tour! I hope you all enjoy my stop and guest post! Make sure to enter the giveaway at the bottom of this post as well. The link to the full tour schedule is linked to the banner! Just click it and it will take you right there.

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Nobody's Goddess

In a village of masked men, magic compels each man to love only one woman and to follow the commands of his “goddess” without question. A woman may reject the only man who will love her if she pleases, but she will be alone forever. And a man must stay masked until his goddess returns his love—and if she can’t or won’t, he remains masked forever. Seventeen-year-old Noll isn't in the mood to celebrate. Her childhood friends have paired off and her closest companion, Jurij, found his goddess in Noll’s own sister. Desperate to find a way to break this ancient spell, Noll instead discovers why no man has ever chosen her. Thus begins a dangerous game between the choice of woman versus the magic of man. And the stakes are no less than freedom and happiness, life and death—and neither is willing to lose. 

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Noll, which is generally (strangely) short for Oliver, is a guy’s name. I fell in love with the name when writing a manuscript I’ve shelved, the earliest writings that one day became Nobody’s Goddess, and named a young man in the manuscript Noll. When he didn’t make the cut from that original manuscript to what became Nobody’s Goddess, I couldn’t give up that name, so I gave it to my main character, who’s a young woman.

The girl who evolved into Noll was originally named Fei, then Feith and then Feilia. (I know. I don’t know what I was thinking, either.) The Noll in Nobody’s Goddess is adventurous and full of spunk, so the tomboyish name seemed to suit her. I even made her actual name a feminine version of Oliver, “Olivière” (o-li-vi-air), to make the nickname make more sense. (I’m not sure why I didn’t just pick Olivia, but the other name felt right to me. I like the way it sounds when a Byronic gentleman might speak it.)

But what if Noll, like her original namesake, was a young man? What if I told the story from a young man’s point of view? Well, if the concept of the novel stayed the same—that men are under a spell (or curse, some might say) that forces each to fall in love with his own woman, whom he treats as a goddess—it’d be an impossible story to write. The men in Noll’s village, with one noticeable exception, have very little free will. A man is obsessed with his goddess and thinks of little else besides pleasing her, making her happy and holding her in his arms. A book told from a male Noll’s point of view would just be full of things like, “My goddess chewed her bread six times before swallowing this morning. The way her jaws move as she chews is so divine.” The only conflict that could possibly erupt in a male Noll’s life would be if his goddess refused him and he was forced to go live in the commune, the rundown area in which the rejected men waste away. Then the narrative would just be full of thoughts like, “When can I see her again? I can’t keep going on without her. Oh, she walked past today. The fact that she refused to look at me as I rolled around the ground in agony was enough to kill me. I think I’m thirsty. What is thirst again? Everything hurts.”

The men in Noll’s village think of little besides their goddesses. If their goddesses love them back, they can function well, but they’re still not really free. From morning until night, they’re concerned about their goddesses’ happiness.

Now, if the story was told from a male Noll’s point of view and the village worked in the opposite way, in that women worshipped men and Noll was then “Nobody’s God,” it would probably wind up a little similar to what it is, but not much. For example, although Noll considered herself “one of the boys” growing up, embracing her feminine side, recognizing her strength as a woman, and opening herself up to friendship with other women is a part of the overall narrative of the trilogy. (Not so much in the first book, though.)

There are also greater ideas about how men and women act when given total control over the other gender. For example, are men as a whole more violent and war-like than women? In Nobody’s Goddess, this is the case, as the village is pretty peaceful because men would never think to fight anyone (unless their goddesses asked them to, but that’s unlikely) since they’re so devoted to one thing and one thing only. Women are less likely to want to engage in physical altercations to begin with, so there’s very little fighting in the village. If Noll was a man who lived in a village with the opposite set of rules, I think man’s propensity for violence would change the setting and perhaps the narrative to an extent. Not to say that Noll “himself” or all of the men would be violent, but violence would be a part of the village’s consciousness, where it’s not really in the matriarchal village.

Nobody’s Goddess is very much the female Noll’s story, but it addresses a lot of ideas about how men and women treat each other. Changing the perspective to a male Noll would change the narrative entirely.

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Anna and the French Kiss

Harry Potter Moment of the Week is a weekly meme created by Uncorked Thoughts. Each week there is a question, Harry Potter related of course, and all you do answer the question. It is a great way to celebrate and keep Harry Potter alive!

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Character You Wish You'd Invented?

Image Source

I actually liked her hair here... (Image Source)

So tell me: Which character do you wish you'd invented?

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Where the Staircase Ends

After her best friend orchestrates the lie that destroys her reputation, Taylor wants more than anything to disappear from her life. But when an accident turns this unspoken wish into reality, instead of an angel-filled afterlife, Taylor must climb a seemingly endless staircase into the sky. Instead of going up, the journey plunges her into the past. As she unravels the mystery behind her friend’s betrayal, she must face the truth about life and find the strength to forgive the unforgivable -- unless the staircase breaks her first.

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Most writers will tell you that there are lots of highs and lows along the path to publication, but one of the biggest highlights is the first time you see your cover art. For me, it was second only to the first time I held a physical copy of Where the Staircase Ends in my hands—I nearly broke the windows with my excited squeals and scared the crap out of my neighbors. But that’s a story for another time. ☺

I received my cover art MUCH faster than I expected. We hadn’t even started the first round of revisions when I got an email from my editor asking for my comments on the first draft of the artwork, which was attached. My hands shook when I clicked on the image.

My first reaction? Shock. It wasn’t what I had expected.

In my head, I’d imagined something different…I thought there would be a close-up picture of a staircase, with maybe some snowdrifts piled in the corners to link to a critical scene in the book. So when I saw that the focal point wasn’t the staircase I was surprised.

Then I started looking at the girl, and I realized she was a PERFECT replica of Taylor, the main character. Especially her elbows. Which may seem like a strange thing to focus on, but the first line of the story literally makes a comment about Taylor’s pointy elbows, so the fact that the cover art nailed that detail was kind of magical.

The more I stared, the more I loved. I actually liked that they made the staircase a subtle background detail and focused more on Taylor, because at the end of the day it’s a story about her, not just a story about the staircase.

We ended up making a few minor changes to the font and the sky, but overall the first version they shared with me isn’t much different from the version you see today. Turns out the hardest part of the process was waiting almost a full year before I could share it with the world. (I may or may not have cheated a few times and showed it to friends, but came you blame me?)

I hope you like it as much as I do.

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Eleanor and Park