Posted in books, movies, paranormal romances, publishing news, tagged amanda hocking, amanda hocking switched, books, district 9, ebooks, film, hocking switched movie, Movies, self-published books, self-publishing, self-publishing amazon, switched film, switched film adaptation, terri tatchell, trylle trilogy, young adult books on February 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Huge Hollywood news out of the getting-hard-to-ignore self-publishing realm.
So when she couldn’t get a traditional book deal, Amanda Hocking wrote and self-published the Trylle trilogy. It’s a cute, fast-paced paranormal romance about trolls and a seemingly regular teenaged girl who gets called back to become queen of their kingdom.
Minnesota twenty-something author Hocking is a true self-publishing success story, and has sold something like 500,000 of her books directly through Amazon in less than a year.
Today she announced that the first book in the series, Switched, which I loved, by the way, is going to be adapted into a screenplay by Terri Tatchell, who penned Best Original Screenplay nominee District 9.
This kind of independent, enterpreneurial stuff just thrills me.
Congratulations, Amanda, and I cannot wait to see über dreamboat Finn on the big screen.
Posted in books, celebrities, gossip, tagged blind gossip, blind items, books, derek jeter, dwayne wade, gabrielle union, gossip, hollywood gossip, kindle, minka kelly, nook, nook vs. kindle, reading on December 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Two of my favorite things together here from agcwebpages.com, a blind-item gossip site (with guesses in italics), that usually turns out to be pretty accurate.
BlindGossip.com. December 15. This actress’ boyfriend has been hinting to her that he got her a very special Christmas gift… and that it’s even better than the one she wanted. She has been excitedly telling friends that she is sure it’s an engagement ring with an even bigger diamond than she requested. Who wants to be the one to break the news to her that her not-ready-for-marriage boyfriend actually bought her a Nook instead of a Kindle? Hope it’s aerodynamic, because she is totally going to throw that thing at him. Minka Kelly/Derek Jeter; Gabrielle Union/Dwayne Wade
Posted in book reviews, books, memoirs, reading, tagged books, glass castle, glass castle jeannette walls, glass castles, jeannette walls, memoirs, misery memoirs, the glass castle on September 3, 2010 | 4 Comments »
The woman at the used bookstore by my house recommended The Glass Castle as “a book for people who don’t even like to read.”
I flipped through the first few pages and didn’t buy it, but I couldn’t get the first image — a woman in New York looking out of her taxi window and seeing her homeless mom rummaging through a dumpster — out of my head, so the next day I went back and coughed up the $7.
I love this book; it’s one of the best I’ve read this year and I’ve been reading a lot.
It’s about four kids and the extremely capricious, bright, destitute parents who drag them all over the country. Narrated by Jeannette Walls, the middle sister, these plucky little Dickensian kids made me want to live in their dirt-poor reality.
The Glass Castle is also a lesson in how to write a memoir. So often people think that if they write a bunch of horrible things that happened to them, other people will automatically relate.
It’s the resilience in the face of misery that people are relating to, though, not the misery.
Posted in book reviews, books, chick lit, Dating Amy, tagged adena halpern, adena halpern 29, adena halpern book 29, baltimore book festival, book reviews, books, chick lit, women's fiction on July 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I was on a panel at the Baltimore Book Festival with Adena Halpern when Dating Amy came out and she was promoting her first book Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown.
Yesterday I read her most recent release 29.
It’s about a 75-year-old woman who wishes to be 29 for a day. She of course gets her wish and ends up hanging out with her granddaughter, experiencing life in Philadelphia as a beautiful young woman with no aches and pains, and maybe even has a chance to start over in love.
On the way she reflects back on her life. Does she have regrets? Of course! Can she rectify them? Maybe.
I read it in a day, which seems fitting since the novel encompasses a day.
Halpern lives in Hollywood and this book reads like a movie: fast-paced with a lot of snappy dialogue.
At its heart, 29 is a book about womens’ relationships: mother, daughter, daughter’s daughter, longtime best friend. It all works.
Most of all, it was thrilling to read a chick-lit style story with a septuagenerian narrator. Please, please give me more fun paperbacks where the main character isn’t a twenty-something. Although in this book she has the figure of one for a day.
