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A reminder that classes for this session start on Fairy Online School Friday. That’s this Friday! Woo-hoo! Now is the time to reserve your space and sign up. The next session may not be until end of March/April. So, if you are itching to learn some really neat stuff in the warm privacy of your own home on these cold, snowy days, now’s the time. Choose from Talking to Angels, Guides and Dead People (so excited about this one), Care of the Sensitive, Fairy Beginner Fairy Secrets class, Animal Mediumship, Animal Healing, and Animal Communication.

Please note, Fairy Joy class sign ups are ongoing, as are Mentorships, which are arranged.

And of course, Readings are ongoing. New ebook almost ready!

I was enthralled with the beautiful cover of the sequel to Fallen, about a difficult love between an angel, Daniel, and a mortal, Luce. Daniel has picked true love over residing in heaven and he enters an uneasy truce with the head of the demons, Cam, for eighteen days. Within that time they both will hunt and kill as many of the Outcasts of Heaven as possible to save Luce from them. Why do they want her? That I will not divulge! Luce is hidden in a high school on the California coast for Nephilim, descendants of angels and humans. I was disappointed by the separation of Luce and Danie, and Luce’s complaints. Fallen angels, demons, half-mortals...their lives are complicated!

ENDERS' Rating: ***

Lauren Kate's Website

The publisher of the Forts series, CANONBRIDGE LLC is working alongside the SOLDIERS' ANGELS charity and has reduced the cost of the book in hopes that you'll purchase, donate, and get it in the hands of the soldiers overseas. This is not only for Forts, but some of their other titles as well.

If you're interested, click the words CANONBRIDGE LLC for more details.

See how easy I made that for you?

Go me!

Steven

My special guest today is Lauren Kate, author of Fallen. Kate grew up in Dallas, sent to school in Atlanta, and started writing in New York. She's also the author of The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove. She's currently working on the sequel to Fallen, Torment. Kate was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer my questions.

Thanks so much for the interview, Lauren! Tell us, what was your inspiration for Fallen?

I got the idea for Fallen from a line in Genesis that describes a group of angels who were cast out of heaven for falling in love with mortal women. I started thinking about what it would be like to be a normal girl--suddenly the object of an angel's affection. What kind of baggage would an angel have? What would her very over-protective parents think? From there, this whole world unfurled in my head. Fallen angels, demons, reincarnation, and the war in heaven were all battling for a piece of the action.

I found the atmosphere in the book deliciously dark. How conscious do you have to be of language to create such an effect?

Thank you! It took me until the second draft of Fallen to realize that the setting was really another character in the story. At times, I struggled with those descriptions—like, how many times can I use the word “humid?”—but then, once I started to see how integral Savannah and Sword and Cross were to Luce’s storyline, I started to have more fun with it. Torment is set in an entirely different place, but I like to think the setting is just as relevant and important, and just as much fun.

Did you plot the story in advance or did the story and characters develop as you wrote?

I surprised myself by meticulously plotting out Fallen before I wrote it. Character descriptions, paragraph long synopses for each chapter, “big” endings, the whole deal. The outline (along with a few chapters) was shared with writer-friends, agents and/or editors at very early stages. And because the story was larger and more complicated than I’d first realized, I actually did revisions on the outline. Way more plotting than I’d ever done before.

At the end of plotting, when I was ready to plunge into the story, it was comforting to sit down every day and know I had to write a chapter where x happened, followed by y, and then z. But sometimes, it was also uninspiring. Suddenly, Y bored me, and Z felt really predictable. But it was in the outline, which fit together like a puzzle! What to do? Eventually, I realized there were days when I would have to loosen my leash from my outlines, to let the story adapt and change organically as I went along. This was a very good decision, and I think the book is stronger because of both my plotting and my plot-straying.

Who is your favorite character in the book? Why?

I love Arriane. The crazy ones are always the most fun, aren’t they? She is crazy, but she’s also smart and loyal and funny and will be very important to Luce over the course of the series.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this novel?

This is the first time I’ve written any kind of series and it was very, very different from my experience writing my first novel, The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove. Because Luce’s story is so far-reaching and will take so long to tell, the challenge of the first book was doing all the work setting up the world of these characters. There were so many rules to invent, so many back-stories to keep straight, and so many plot twists to withhold from the reader for later books! All of that was a challenge, but I *think* it paid off for me as a writer. Because so much is already in place, Torment has been vastly

My girls have been called “assertive,” “independent,” and “natural leaders,” but those are all just polite ways of saying “bossy.” When I picked Keilana up from the Children’s Center at Chico State, I knew she would be in the fantasy play area telling her poor little friend Eddie what to do in a stern voice. She was bossy. Addison was the only child to get kicked out of school on the first day of kindergarten for staging a coup against the regime requiring her to make the letter “d” differently than she had learned. The principal called and asked if I had ever considered putting Addie in the afternoon kindergarten. When I inquired why she would ask, she told me there was an opening in the afternoon for a girl with a “strong personality.” Which means bossy. Scarlett goes around the sandbox at the park and collects sand toys from other children to redistribute as she sees fit. And they let her. I’m telling you, these girls are bossy. Certainly they all three came here with their own spirit, but I admit to encouraging them in asserting themselves. For me, it’s hard to know, let alone teach, where to draw the line between enforcing personal boundaries and infringing on the space of others. The little angel friends in Nancy Parent’s I Have Feelings, Too have to find a way to do that very thing. Sometimes playing well with others, and showing love, means someone else gets to be the boss.


http://isbndb.com/d/book/i_have_feelings_too_a01.html

http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Nancy_Parent.html

For your viewing pleasure we present some recent releases that have pretty neat-o typefaces on the cover:

An Eye for Color, a picture book about Josef Albers (Henry Holt, 2009). Clever.


Next, we have Fallen, a young adult thriller/dark romance about good ol' fallen angels (Doubleday, 2009). The typeface has just enough of a romantic feel, no?


Incarceron (Penguin, 2010) is a dystopian thriller. Unlike some people out there, I'm still not over steampunk. Love the clockwork lettering.


The Rock and the River (S&S, 2009). Not an unusual typeface, yet it's clean and fresh here.


Ellen Hopkins' Tricks (S&S, 2009). Edgy and dangerous.


See also this pretty neat-o post about a documentary coming out this month about a typeface museum. Really.