2nd Annual Authors Are Rockstars Tour: A.J. Paquette {Guest Post}

I'm so excited to be participating in the Annual Authors Are Rockstars event again! This event is organized and run by the splendiferious  Fiktshun, Two Chicks on Books, and Magical Urban Fantasy Reads. 

My rockstar author is....

A.J. is the author of several books and is here today with some of her top favorite quotes from all of her books! But first, let me tell you why I think A.J. Paquette is a rockstar author:

Why A.J. Paquette is a Rockstar Author

I think A.J. is a Rockstar Author because, not only does she write enthralling, highly entertaining, and thought-provoking books, she writes them for ALL kinds of young readers. From the littlest readers to readers young at heart, A.J. has a book for everyone. She writes fantastic picture books, middle-grade books that sparkle and shine, and smart, complexly crafted young adult books. But that's not all...A.J. isn't just an author, she's also a literary agent, which means she doesn't just write awesome books, she helps share other awesome books by other rockstar authors with the world! 

A.J. Paquette's Favorite Quotes From Her Books

Author’s Note: Ask any parent to pick a favorite child, and I’m guessing that most will kindly demur. Now imagine having thousands upon thousands of paragraphs, er, children—not only do you have to choose between them, but you also have to remember each of them individually! Needless to say, not the easiest task to accomplish. Despite this, I was excited when assigned this blog post topic; it was immensely fun to dive into my projects old and new, poke around, and see which quotes caught my eye. From these I’ve pulled out a selection of the ones that did so: I will not say that these are my “Top Favorite Quotes,” but I will say that they are ones I like very much, and which I hope give a flavor for the stories from they are drawn. Maybe you will be inspired to pick up one or more of the full books and check them out for yourself?  –AJP 

#1

I am alone. People around me talk, laugh, push, jostle. They speak into small mobile phones and they squawk at their children. They look coyly at boys or girls near them. They move fluidly through this dance of life without giving it a second thought. And here I stand, stuck on the side with my dancing shoes still in hand. It is not that I don’t know the right moves—I don’t even hear the same music.

--Luchi arrives in Bangkok, in NOWHERE GIRL (Walker/Bloomsbury, 2011)

#2

The sun is shining, and we are in the mood for adventure. It’s a perfect day for tracking fairies! Let’s go look for clues. –The hunt begins, in THE TIPTOE GUIDE TO TRACKING FAIRIES (Tanglewood, 2011)

#3

Dahlia was dead, but the sunflower was not. Not yet, anyway. It still looked shimmery and only half-visible, just like all other living things. But the stem was bent and broken, and drooped down from the rest of the plant. Soon it would expire—right into Dahlia’s waiting hands. Then she would carry the new ghost flower to her garden. –We are introduced to Dahlia, in RULES FOR GHOSTING (Walker/Bloosmbury, 2013)

#4

Six months didn’t seem nearly long enough to inhabit a place like this. It was the kind of house you wanted to take your time to explore, savoring every room and introducing yourself to each doorframe and wall hanging. It was the kind of house you wanted to make friends with slowly, because you knew it would be a friendship worth keeping, one that could last a lifetime. –Oliver arrives at Silverton Manor, in RULES FOR GHOSTING (Walker/Bloomsbury, 2013)

#5

“Cyclid-Bf appears to be in every way ideal for supporting human life,” said eminent astrophysicist Dr. Alan Bartleby. “Yet any humans actually trying to get there would perish long before arrival. Humanity may have just found its ultimate paradox.” –News article quoted in PARADOX (Random House, 2013)

#6

Ana has no idea what kind of person she was, or is, but one thing she does know right now: Loneliness and self- pity are not only self-indulgent but dangerous. You have now arrived on Paradox. She’s maybe alone, definitely damaged, possibly deranged— but she’s here. On this alien planet. She has no one to rely on but herself. –Ana gets moving, in PARADOX (Random House, 2013)

#7

Petey is enjoying a TRANQUIL afternoon: peace and quiet and some light gardening. Pru is feeling TRICKSY. She has a sneaky little plan. –PETEY AND PRU AND THE HULLABALOO (Clarion, 2013)

A.J. Paquette

Website / Goodreads / Twitter

A.J. Paquette has been writing stories since early childhood. She and her sister would spend hours creating masterpieces of stapled paper and handwritten words, complete with pen-and-ink covers and boxed illustrations. The road to publication was long and winding, peppered with many small successes including: a variety of national magazine publications, being a 2005 PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award honoree, and receiving the 2008 SCBWI’s Susan Landers Glass Scholarship Award, for the book that would later become Nowhere Girl. Her first picture book, The Tiptoe Guide to Tracking Fairies, was published in 2009. She now lives with her husband and two daughters in the Boston area, where she continues to write books for children and young adults. She is also an agent with the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. 

BOOKS BY A.J. PAQUETTE

(click on each book to learn more)

Picture Books

Middle-Grade

Check out my 5 cupcakes review of Rules for Ghosting

Young Adult

Check out my 4 cupakes review of Paradox

Authors Are Rockstars Tour: Michelle Hodkin

I'm SO excited to be a part of the Authors Are Rockstars Tour!

My rockstar author is the loverly Michelle Hodkin, author of the fantastic The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (read my review) and the soon to be released The Evolution of Mara Dyer, and she is stopping by today with a fab Top Tens List guest post.

But first, let's meet Michelle...

Website / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook

Michelle Hodkin is the author of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, the first book in the Mara Dyer trilogy. She grew up in Florida, went to college in New York, and studied law in Michigan. When she isn't writing, she can usually be found prying strange objects from the jaws of one of her three pets. You can visit her online at michellehodkin.com

and find out why I think she's a total rockstar!

Michelle is a rockstar author because she wrote a book that...

has readers saying

how awesome, you ask readers?

an awesome book with a guy that makes readers

and an ending that leaves readers all

Yep, Michelle rocks my face off and bakes my cupcakes!!!

Now check out this fab Top Tens List guest post from the rockin' and awesome Michelle Hodkin that includes a few teaser sentences from book two...

Top Ten Favorite Quotes from 

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer and The Evolution of Mara Dyer

From The Unbecoming

1. “My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something.” 

This sentence, the first sentence of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, is the backbone of the trilogy. It frames the entire narrative and does so many things with so few words: it cues the reader to ask who Mara Dyer is, why she has a lawyer, and why she needed a pseudonym to begin with. It’s probably my favorite quote from all three books.

2. “Watch your language.  It's unbecoming." 

This is another bit that does so much with so little. Spoken by Daniel at the beginning of The Unbecoming, it references Mara’s potty mouth and gives us a bit of insight into her lovable but seriously pretentious brother. And, clearly, it’s a play on words: not only is Mara’s language “unbecoming,” but the title, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, relates to her transition from what she was into something else (Gregory Maguire, in Wicked, wrote of Elphaba, “It's unbecoming…A perfect word for my new life. Unbecoming. I who have always been unbecoming am becoming un."). But there’s also another element, about the idea that using “foul” language is an “unbecoming” personality trait; in the larger context of what’s actually going on with Mara and the choices she makes, it sort of begs the question: are you really going to get huffy about her  language? Really? 

3. “Have you made any other friends since we've been here?" 

I gave him the death stare. "Yes, actually." 

"Who? I want a name." 

"Jamie Roth." 

"The Ebola kid? I heard he's a little unstable." 

"That was one incident.”

Jamie’s (bizarre) obsession with Ebola is my (bizarre) obsession with Ebola, and the incident Jamie describes on pages 41 and 42? The one that provoked Daniel to say what he says above on Page 244? That was me. I was in 8th grade. Whole thing was blown COMPLETELY out of proportion. 

4. “You're supposed to say, 'All I want is your happiness. I'll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.'" 

"Sorry," Noah said. "I'm just not that big of a person.”

This exchange captures the Mara/Noah dynamic pretty perfectly. Mara lampshades a romance cliché and then Noah rejects it. But in doing so, he still owns his bad behavior; he’s a teenage boy, after all, and he’s far from perfect (even if Mara doesn’t always see him that way, especially in The Unbecoming). One of my favorite things about writing this series is how the characters continually surprise each other, for better and worse.

5. “I twisted my arm to curl him behind me and he unfolded there, the two of us snuggled like quotation marks in his room full of words.”

This line is thought by Mara as she’s in Noah’s bed, in his bedroom, on her birthday. I don’t think of myself as being a particularly descriptive writer, but this sentence, written during a frenzied writing session, ended up being one of my favorites—it’s an unusually evocative image, for me. 

From The Evolution:

6. “Own yourself.” 

An allusion to a quote attributed to both Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudyard Kipling; “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” I find that idea exceedingly interesting because it makes you wonder what price could be too high. Would it still worth it to make your own choices, and own them?

7. “I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.” 

This speaks so much to the inner and outer conflicts that plague Mara, and to the changing relationship with her family. It’s a powerful thought and has ramifications later, but she doesn’t quite realize how much of an impact this really has on her at the moment she thinks it. 

8. “Get a meadow.” 

My beloved Twilight reference! The self-awareness of the characters in this series is quite possibly my most favorite thing about it. Getting to go meta and to lampshade clichés (See, e.g. Jamie’s line in The Unbecoming, “[Y]ou’re not going to listen to your token black Jewish bi friend, are you?”) is probably the most fun I’ll ever have writing, period. I’m hesitant to say who says this quote, but I will say that it’s directed at Noah and Mara. 

9. Mara: “We’re only seventeen.” 

Noah: “Fuck seventeen.”

This exchange happens at a highly charged moment in what is possibly my favorite scene in the entire book. There’s a stark juxtaposition between the coarseness of the word “fuck” and the content of their conversation—and Noah’s critical words that follow it. I wish I could say what those words are, but I would hate myself if I spoiled this scene for anyone else.

10. “Her sound is a siren’s song, calling me to the rocks.” 

So, In The Evolution, readers will get a glimpse of Noah’s point of view. Surprise! This line is evocative of both Noah’s (really different) voice, and also the changing dynamic between his character and Mara’s. It’s my favorite line of his, I think. 

And there you have it—thank you so much for having me! 

Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.
She’s wrong.

Purchase: Amazon / B&N / Book Depository

Mara Dyer once believed she could run from her past.
She can’t.
She used to think her problems were all in her head.
They aren’t.
She couldn’t imagine that after everything she’s been through, the boy she loves would still be keeping secrets.
She’s wrong.
In this gripping sequel to The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, the truth evolves and choices prove deadly. What will become of Mara Dyer next?

Purchase: Amazon / B&N / Book Depository