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Publisher’s Weekly review! Yay!

Posted on March 13, 2012
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It’s so incredibly nerve-wracking (but also exciting) in the month or so before a book comes out. The reviews start to roll in and the nail-biting commences. The Google Alerts start appearing in your inbox, causing your heart to palpitate just a bit each time you check your email.

That’s how I came across this review of Cat Girl’s Day Off from Publisher’s Weekly:

“I was a freak from a family of freaks.” High school sophomore Natalie “Nat” Ng has a “Talent” she’s not proud of: the ability to talk to cats. Her younger sister is a “supergenius” with chameleonlike abilities; her older sister is proficient in truth divination and levitation, and has X-ray vision; and her parents work for the Bureau of Extrasensory Regulation and Management. When a film crew comes to Nat’s Chicago high school to shoot a takeoff of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off things get fishy: the female star isn’t acting like herself, and Nat learns from a cat that celebrity blogger Easton West may not be who she claims to be. Along with her friends Oscar and Melly, Nat gets dragged into a whirlwind adventure to find out what happened to the real Easton. Pauley (Still Sucks to Be Me) offers amusing insights into the minds of cats, snappy dialogue, and a fast-paced plot. Readers should easily relate to Nat, and cat-lovers in particular will find a lot to enjoy in this romp. Ages 12–up.

So….yay! Kirkus AND Publisher’s Weekly like it!

You will too. Really. I promise. And remember, if you pre-order or buy it the first week, I’ll send YOU a personal letter and a signed bookplate. So, um, get on that, wouldja? I’m starting to work on those requests now and I’d love to be able to mail some of them while we’re visiting the US later this month instead of mailing them from here…(postage…it’s a killer).

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New Review of Sucks to Be Me in Locus Magazine!

Posted on November 7, 2008
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Ok, so for those of you who have never heard of it, Locus Magazine is a magazine about science fiction and fantasy. It’s not a book of sci-fi and fantasy stories…instead, it actually covers books and magazines that are about sci fi and fantasy. I used to have a subscription to it for years and let it lapse when we moved. Now I wish I had it again! Carolyn Cushman reviewed Sucks to Be Me and liked it! Yay!!

Here are some excerpts from the review…

“The adolescent vampire novel gets a pleasantly light, bizarrely heartwarming treatment in this novel, supposedly the diary of Mina Hamilton, whose parents are both vampires…It’s an unusual mix, a welcome change from all the darker, angsty teen vampire novels around these days, and a very promising first novel.”

Yay! I love that! Bizarrely heartwarming is the kind of thing I was aiming for. :-)

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Google-Obsession OR new mentions of Sucks to Be Me online

Posted on July 24, 2008
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Okay, so one of the things new authors do (and probably “old” authors too) is google themselves incessantly to see if they can find any new mentions of their book online. This is partly because we’re gluttons for punishment but also because you’re generally not notified when something is posted. So if you wanna know what the people are saying (and we do, oh yes we do), you Google it. So I did that this morning while Max was sleeping (I’d have been sleeping too, but the phone – which I didn’t get to in time – had rung).

There’re quite a few new mentions, notably:

  • Top Selling Vampire Novels: The Books They Love post on Booky Kids, the blog of an Indie bookseller in California, who calls STBM a fun book and a great read! Woot!
  • Love at First Bite article from Maclean’s, which looks to be a Canadian magazine. STBM is mentioned along with the rarified company of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series as kind of a funny chick-lit alternative.
  • A Revish review of Sucks to Be Me by someone named Elizabeth, who calls STBM “cute, light, and funny mixed with a dash of seriousness and angst.” and furthermore says that she “hope[s] this is the first in a series.” Yay!
  • And another review from And Another Book Read that says: “From the very first page I was literally “sucked” into this book. It was truly fantastic. What I loved the most was the humor. Mina had such a witty voice that I found myself laughing with every turn of the page.”
  • And I was actually the subject of a Yahoo Answers question! Ha!
  • And I found some library’s webpage that showed that 5 libraries had ordered a copy and it was already requested 8 times!
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My first YABC review!

Posted on May 9, 2008
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Yay! My first YABC review has been posted (by Brenda, who was one of the ARC winners). And she liked it! Double Yay!

I’m just excited to have my first review of my book on my website. :-) Can you tell?

And in writing news…I had a little epiphany this morning on a new way to open up the second novel that will tie it better to the first one. The opening was okay before, but I think this will make it better :-) And I’ve been modifying the outline…had some new thoughts, especially about George…he wasn’t in the original outline enough and I really like him, especially his sense of humor. So I’m happy about that.

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