List mania.

The Absolute Value of -1 appears on a couple of lists this morning.

Kelly at Stacked lists her favorites of 2010. A taste: "Brezenoff's book is the perfect tale of the average kid navigating the tricky terrain, the painful events, and the completely normal aspects of being a teenager in high school."

And Jamie at Bookmarked Reviews includes |-1| on her favorite debuts of the year. "...I think it's probably the most under-appreciated debut of the year." Thanks!

A guest post from Mindi Scott

Today we've got a guest post from fellow Tenner Mindi Scott. This is in fact the FINAL Tenner guest post, because--as you may have noticed--the Tenner year is just about over now. The last Tenner release was last week, I think. I can hardly believe it's gone.

But I digress. I have a tendency to do that. Back to Mindi.

Mindi's debut, FREEFALL, from Simon Pulse (where I totally used to work, thankyouverymuch), is an achievement of the highest magnitude. Seth McCoy is a well realized, superbly voice, and completely believable protagonist. His story is difficult and deep, and Mindi handles the dark and light equally well. It's a fantastic debut, and it's been out since early October, so you should have read it by now.

And now, here's Mindi's guest blog on the usual guest blog theme: fish out of water.

People are always asking authors whether the characters in their books are inspired by people they know in real life. For Freefall, my answer to that question is "no," especially in regards to Seth McCoy, my narrator. He's probably the most truly fictional character I've ever created.

There are a few things that I have in common with him, though. One of those is that the first time I stepped foot at a country club, I felt like a fish out of water. Everything was so elegant and everyone there who wasn't me seemed so oblivious. Like, it was just an ordinary day at an ordinary place, la la la, who cares!

In my book, there is a scene where Seth visits a country club for the first time. The narrative is very much filtered through his point of view and in his voice, of course, but the out-of-placeness he experiences is similar to mine . . . which is cool, because it makes me feel less alone and stuff. ;-)

Thanks, Mindi! Here are some links and such for more info on Freefall and Mindi.

**********

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Freefall-Mindi-Scott/dp/1442402784/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283449255&sr=8-1

Links about Mindi:

http://mindiscott.com/
http://twitter.com/mindi_scott
http://www.youtube.com/user/authormindiscott
http://www.thecontemps.com/

And the trailer for FREEFALL:

Upcoming events

I've got some exciting events happening in the next few weeks.

Tuesday, November 23. 6:30 EST: I'll be the guest on A Book and a Chat, the latest in a long string of male writers of young adult books for Male YA Author Month. Take a look at the guest list for the month. Not too shabby! Unfortunately, you've already missed a lot of it*. But fortunately, you ain't yet missed me, baby! Call in. No, seriously. You. Call in.

Saturday, December 4. 2:00 CST: I'll be joining Pete Hautman (author of Godless, Sweetblood, and, most currently, Blank Confession, among much else) at the Loft Second Story Reading Series, hosted by the inimitable Swati Avasthi and Heather Bouwman. I plan to read a bit from The Absolute Value of -1, and a bit from next year's Brooklyn, Burning.

Saturday, December 11. 1:00 CST: Magers & Quinn, where we held the |-1| launch party and reading, has invited me to sign some books for an hour or so. Also signing during that slot will be Alison McGhee.

I hope to see or hear from some of you at one or all of those fabulous, mind-blowing events of death! I mean, just events. Not of death. Never mind the death part.

*Actually, they're all archived, I think, so you can totally still hear them.

Some would say it was never gone.

I've been busy lately with deadlines for work-for-hire projects, and for the first round of revisions to BROOKLYN, BURNING, but I thought it would be nice to take a little break and visit the blog once this week. So here I am!

First of all, this song has been on repeat in my ears most of the day. I never was much into Buckner, but this song closes the Merge Records sampler I got when I bought the latest Superchunk CD, and I'm obsessed. Perhaps you'll enjoy it.




Second! As you may have noticed, a couple of posts ago I started using the add-on IntenseDebate. I'm loving it, and if the surge in comments is any indication, y'all are too. This pleases me, but now I feel a pressure to always post on issues that are likely to inspire comments. I'll certainly post about music again, though maybe not with the focus of that Greatest LPs post, and I hope to write another post that compares NY and MN linguistic intricacies.

Until then, please enjoy this review by Emily. I like it especially because she was a teen on Long Island, just like I was, and just like Lily, Noah, and Simon are.

Minnesotan as a Second Language

I'm pretty into language, and I'm obviously into New York, and I live in Minnesota, and . . .

Well, for a million reasons -- not the least of which is that it actually come close to fitting in with the alleged theme of this blog -- I have decided to compile a list of differences between everyday interactions, here in Minnesota, and back in the tri-state area. (That means New York City and its suburbs in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.) For our first installment, we will visit the most popular coffee shops in each area: Caribou and Starbucks.


In Minnesota, the Caribou cashier will greet you, and actually smile and listen to your reply to "How are you doing today?"

In New York, the Starbucks cashier might make eye contact when she asks what you want: "Can I help you?" If she says "How are you?" it just means "What do you want?", and if you reply and ask how she is doing, you will get a vacant stare in response.

In Minnesota, the cashier will then ask you if "you need anything else today?" She might tell you how nice/cold/rainy/hot out it is, and that the football game will be on later, and perhaps you plan to watch?

In New York, the cashier will, while writing on your cup, say, "That it?"

In Minnesota, after you pay, the cashier will ask if "you need a receipt at all?" ("At all?" What does that mean, anyway? Am I supposed to say, "I need it just a tiny bit"?) She will suggest you have a great rest of the day, and perhaps stay cool/dry/warm/inside/outside.

In New York, the cashier will put the receipt in your hand with your change in such a way that the change will fall from your hand and roll off the counter. She will say "sorry" and turn to the next customer while you try to get the coins that are rolling around the store.

In Minnesota, after you take your change, no one will make a move to order until you've put everything in its proper wallet or pocket or zippered bag compartment and moved completely out of the way. While they wait, they will smile and look at you. It will make you nervous.

In New York, the moment you have your change (or are scrambling for it all over the shop), the next person will start right in, often before being asked, leaning across and in front of you if necessary: "Yeah, lemme get a double nonfat latte in two cups . . ." It will make you nervous.

The Greatest LPs of All-Time . . . kind of.

We're not talking about the, say, My Aim Is True, which was the starting gun on a long and inspired career. We're not talking about the Nevermind, which was a perfectly-timed, but hugely derivative, LP that defined a generation. We're not talking about a You're Living All Over Me or a Diary, which appealed, despite their greatness, to a small group of particularly discerning fans--and still do. We're not even talking an Exile on Main St. or a Led Zeppelin IV, which stand out as a distinct highpoint in a long career of vast influence on popular music overall.

The Life Pursuit -- Belle & Sebastian
London Calling -- The Clash
The Soft Bulletin -- Flaming Lips
OK Computer -- Radiohead
Pet Sounds -- The Beach Boys

Something about these LPs--and I have no doubt there are many others, too--connects them. They are the best work the bands have done (obviously that is debatable, but I have a suspicion that if I checked sales numbers, they're at least the best-sellers*), and they seemed to come from nowhere. Example: The Flaming Lips were, despite renown on the college radio scene, essentially a psychedelic punk band known as much for their strangeness and inability to cross over as for their sound. Their biggest hit before 1999 was "She Don't Use Jelly." In fact, it remains their only hit in the States. But in 1999, they released The Soft Bulletin. Many longtime fans (including myself) were surprised (and, yeah, disappointed) by the drastic change in their sound. We eventually came around--or most of us did. But more importantly, the Lips were suddenly critics' darlings. They were all over the Mtv. The Soft Bulletin was called the third best album of 1990s by Pitchfork, and the best album of 1999 by NME.

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots followed for the Lips. In my opinion, it is an uninspired follow-up to The Soft Bulletin. It's a good record, sure, but I'd rather listen to--I don't know--Clouds Taste Metallic or Hit to Death in the Future Head. It doesn't hold up to repeated listenings, and no one was talking about it as a groundbreaking, career-changing release.

Radiohead's OK Computer. Where the hell did that come from? Seriously, did anyone expect that after the tepid Pablo Honey, "Creep"'s success notwithstanding? The Bends was a stronger record, I suppose, but Radiohead was--to me--another mopey group of Brits, one of whom (lead singer Thom Yorke) looked an awful lot like Martin Short doing a mopey Brit. Then one morning in 1997, getting ready for work with Mtv on, I caught a new video but missed the opening credit. I didn't move from the couch till it ended. It was "Paranoid Android." (Not an embeddable clip, but worth clicking over if you haven't seen this video.)

OK Computer was a daring and brilliant record. Radiohead found fans they never had before, in the public and the press. It made nearly every best-of-the-year list, in the US and the UK, and won a Grammy. (I kind of get a kick out of how much Robert Christgau of the Village Voice didn't like it. Scroll down to Dud of the Month.) But the point: this was a daring, sparse, experimental, unfamiliar album. No one outside of the band's inner circle could have predicted this musical shift. But there it is, and it's brilliant, and everything since for Radiohead doesn't come close. Sure, the Kid A lovers exist (I'm not among them), and they continue to sell LPs and fill halls, but they never again saw a career-exploding popular and critical success like OK Computer.

I am not a Clash fan. I am a huge fan, though, of London Calling. In 1979, these guys recorded an album that explored ska, reggae, punk, rockabilly, and good old rock 'n' roll. It turned out to be the breakthrough they'd been looking for in the US, and went on to appear on not just the best-of-the-year lists by many rags, and not just best-of-the-decade (often making best of the '70s and best of the '80s list, despite being release in 1979), but best of all-time lists. Rolling Stone called it the eighth best record ever. They never had the same success again. They never pleased the critics or the public in the same way. Of course, hardcore Clash fans exist in great numbers, and they swallow up the discography like delicious foodstuff. But for most music fans, I think, London Calling is as deep into that discography as we need to get.

I won't go into detail on The Life Pursuit, except to say that B&S fans who have been around since Tigermilk will tell you that simply everyone who never much cared for B&S adored The Life Pursuit. Well, they've put out their follow-up, and it's . . . good. But I'm not listening to it repeatedly.

Or Pet Sounds. You want a WTF moment? I can only imagine what happened when a bunch of Jan and Dean fans slipped this slab of wax on their Victrolas, maybe expecting to hear the ilk of "Surfin' USA" or "California Girls." This is the album Paul McCartney played for John Lennon--over and over and over--and that was after they'd already done Rubber Soul. Come on!

And Pet Sounds is a great place to stop, because it highlights well the problem with such records: what followed for Brian Wilson--the LP's mastermind--was a "lost" LP called Smile. It was simply never good enough, and it didn't see the light of day until 2004, nearly 40 years after Pet Sounds was released. And that's the only truth about all these LPs I can figure: every artist I've mentioned simply never did it again. They struck absolute greatness--created some of the best and best appreciated music of all time--and then slipped toward mediocrity once again.

Why? Is it the grasping for greatness, having touched it once, that makes it impossible to hold (like soap in the shower, if you will)? That's the best explanation I can give. Of course, what might be more valuable is an answer to this: How did they hit greatness to begin with? The bands above didn't give any indication that they'd someday create such start-to-finish masterpieces, albums I would, at a moment of weakness, even call flawless. But they did.

I guess if we had an answer to that, we'd all have framed platinum records hanging in our living rooms.

*I checked, and Yoshimi is gold, while Soft Bulletin is not. My best guess is that Yoshimi was released to a public suddenly familiar with the Flaming Lips. Also, "Do You Realize?" was frequently used in commercials.

Titles

Here's the thing: By the time I get halfway through a first draft, my work has a name. It fits the story, as I see it, from the point where I start to actually see the story.

(The Tom Petty music in this coffee shop is too loud and makes it difficult for me to enjoy the Smiths and Noisettes and Belle and Sebastian and Avett Brothers in my headphones. The complicated musical collision is unpleasant and I keep making all the typos and losing track of sentences before I finish them.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. Titles. When I wrote |-1|, it was called Splinters. In my head, and to my wife, I still sometimes call it Splinters. It was only very recently that I renamed the folders in my PC, from Splinters to Absolute Value.

I've got a WIP right now--about a girl addicted to a popular MMORPG, losing her grip on reality--that I call A Terrible Mistake. The aspect of the plot that produced that title is now gone, but I think I'll always call it A Terrible Mistake in my mind.

There's this other one--I just sold it, and I got my revision notes from the AE last night--that I've been calling Two Summers around the Fire for, well, like a year, I guess. It takes place during two separate summers, and between them was a fire. But yeah, it sounds more like it's a camping story. (Is there such a thing as a camping story? I've never camped, so don't ask me.) Therefore, I exhibited exactly no surprise when that title had to go.

We brainstormed. Everyone I know brainstormed! Well, like five people I know brainstormed! I don't know a lot of people.

Anyway.

We came up with a few great ideas, several mediocre ideas, and a multitude of crap. (Have you ever seen a multitude of crap?! It's not what the angels had in mind, I can assure you.)

We narrowed it down. We bartered and haggled and compromised and held firm. We added commas. We took them back out. We put them back in. We added "is," and took it out again. We put it back. We capped it. We lowercased it. We took it out again. There was a comma under my desk, so I put that in. A question mark got stuck in my shoe and I had a limp for a week.

I went to the Metro State library and worked with the research librarian for 45 minutes to properly attribute a quote of Jeremy Taylor that he probably never actually said.

I watched this video like six times.

And this one.

And then this one, for no good reason. It's a freaking Four-Chord Song, but I couldn't stop. I'm going to watch it again.

Then, last night, I met with the AE at a coffee shop here in St. Paul, where we both live. While I waited for him to show, I watched this video again. I'll leave out the boring part, or at least save it for a post about revisions, and cut to the title--the final title for what was Two Summers around the Fire--and is now . . .

Brooklyn, Burning

Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Fire. Love. Arson. Sunrise, sunset. It's pretty perfect, really.

We found a witch.

Wow, I have been the worst blogger of all time. I know, people are irritated when blog entries open with sentences like that. People are irritated by a lot of things, like car alarms or cat dander. Such is life.

We're back from our very short vacation! Here is the crazy house we stayed in. We loved it.

It was our first vacation as a family, unless you count trips to family events or obligations, which we don't, and if you go by those rules, which we did, it is even the first vacation for Beth and me as a married couple! Or even as a freaking dating couple! We never went anywhere! The point is, traveling with a toddler is a job of work. But Sam did love the lighthouse and the choo-choo. Here is Sam near the choo-choo.


He claims he liked the big boats as well, but there was only one, and we didn't board, and I don't think he was paying attention when we walked past it*.

Also, regarding Duluth: If you play Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening, and if you haven't yet bought the expansion Witch Hunt, don't. Why? Because (A) it's pretty boring and doesn't really answer any of your questions, and (B) Morrigan is working at the Duluth Grill. She's shorter in person, and isn't wearing that crazy outfit, but you wouldn't either because she's an apostate and has to stay on the DL, so she can't very well go around in that get-up with a staff on her freaking back, can she? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, all the better.

Out of respect for my adopted state, I did not wear my favorite baseball cap all weekend. But when the next series starts on Friday, it's back on my head. Don't give me any crap.

*Photos are by Beth, and from her new blog.

Blogtours, bidding

Did you miss my whole blog tour? I hope so, because now you can read the whole freaking thing right in a row.

But before the big list of links, let's talk about Swati Avasthi's just-beginning blog tour for charity! Here's a banner!



There's loads of great items--from signed books to MS crits--including a personalized |-1| and 100-page crit from me! Go bid right away.

In other news, I think we have a final title for Two Summers, and it ain't Two Summers, folks. It's better, I can say with astute clarity. I feel like using words that aren't entirely appropriate in context today. Anyway, I'll blog about titles and such soon.

Okay, so. My little blog tour. Here it is!

An interview with Noah, one of the |-1| narrators

A review of |-1| at The Hiding Spot

A short interview with me

A review of |-1| at Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf

A guest post at Lost for Words

A review of |-1| at Lost for Words

An interview with me

A review of |-1| at A Good Addiction

Another interview with me

A review of |-1| at The Book Scout

Release Party

The release celebration and reading of The Absolute Value of -1 was last Thursday, September 23. It went well! Here is some photo evidence that it occurred, thanks to Jodi.


At the reading, I read one chapter from each major narrator (reading Lily was way more difficult than I thought it would be, by the way. When it came time to start reading Noah, with all his ridiculousness, it was a huge relief), then answered a few excellent questions. My wife's grandparents sat right in the front row, and did not flinch at the dozens of F bombs dropping from the lectern. So yay!

There were also black-and-white cookies, that New York dessert staple, and a box of red wine, which apparently some people didn't notice. More for me! Kidding. I only had like ten cups. Kidding again! I only had one.

The turn-out was excellent, and I hope I can do another event at Magers & Quinn soon. They're great. I do wish I'd taken a photo from the lectern, but next time I'll remember. Oh, and M&Q video'd the thing, and the sound might be very low, but we'll see. More to follow if it's at all watch-worthy.

Anyway, big thanks to everyone who showed up! Good lookin' out.

Twitterview

I did not invent the word, so don't give me a hard time about it. However, if you do want to give me a hard time about it, the best time would be during my Twitterview.

Please join me -- @sbrezenoff -- at 1 pm central time Wednesday, September 22. Ask me anything; just use the hashtag #absolutevalue, and I'll see it and reply. It will be so freaking fun.

Until then, peruse my responses to Minnesota Reads' "6 questions we hardly ever ask." I bet you can't guess my ultimate Jeopardy! categories.

Press!

It's been a good press week for THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF -1. Here's the rundown!

I was interviewed by Jessica at A Fanatic's Book Blog. She asked some excellent questions, so it's a pretty interesting interview, if I do say so myself! All credit to Jessica, naturally.

Next, the latest Booklist includes a review of |-1|. I can't link to it, because their website requires a subscription, but I found the full text on the Hennepin County Library website, so I grabbed a screenshot and here it is!



And finally--seriously, "last but not least" was invented for this--|-1| was called Young Adult Book of the Year by local lifestyle glossy magazine METRO. Please read the whole list, because it's an excellent list, and my book and I are in some pretty impressive company, not the least of which is Forever Young Adult! You'll no doubt recall that their review of |-1| was jaw-droppingly awesome. Well, METRO thought so too, and they featured that excellent blog right in conjunction with |-1|. So cool.

Reminder: The official launch party and reading is less than a week away now. The details! Please come, and yes, I will be cussing. At least a little bit. Twitter told me it's okay.

Past tensed!

I still need to pick a winner for the release day giveaway, I know. The good news is that most of the people that helped spread the love by sharing that post and the trailer for The Absolute Value of -1 totally already have the book. So, if you entered, there's a really good chance you won. I'll announce, um, let's see . . . really soon?

In other news, the inimitable Josh Berk has MasterBerked |-1|. There's also a fine rap. Embedded!


And finally, Mindi Scott, author of Freefall--which will be out October 5 and I hear is great but I haven't read yet and want to--interviewed me for her Magic 8 series. Linked!

Apparently, I'm feeling my Strong Bad this morning. Techno'd!

|-1| Day!

Today's the day! The Absolute Value of -1 is officially enjoying its release day.

(Of course, it's been available for sale online--and in one or two brick and mortars--for some time now. But I've been looking forward to September 1, 2010 for a long while, so we're not about to just ignore it, am I right?)

At the end of this entry, I'll announce a contest that begins right now and ends at midnight tonight. So if you're impatient, scroll down for the details.

First order of business, in our celebration, though: I haven't posted the trailer in an age, so here it is.



If you like it, please nominate and vote for it at the SLJ trailer competition!

And now, on to the sappy stuff. I usually let the AE handle the sentimental strolls down memory lane, but I think this morning I'll take some of it upon myself. I've been going through old e-mails. Here are a few choice excerpts from over the course of |-1|'s creation:

The AE, the day after he received my original manuscript:

I didn’t mean to read the whole thing right away, but I did, and I’d really like to talk with you about it. Suffice it to say I did not find myself humming “Jack and Diane.”

As context, consider "Jack and Diane" to be the opposite of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It was three months later before I sent the AE a closer-to-final version, with a new 30k words. My note:

This MS is by no means perfect, and there is a passage or two I am going to continue to lose sleep over (such as the last five or six words, which I think fall a little flat), but I do think it's ready for some [editorial] input.

The little novel that could made it to an acquisition meeting. The AE emails me a report afterward:

Good news. It went well. Lots of people read it and liked it (got some good notes, too). I’ll be making an offer.

Eventually, the sale is official and made public in the traditional way: Publishers Marketplace.

Steve Brezenoff's untitled book, about four Long Island teens whose lives unravel suddenly and dramatically (and with a fair amount of pot), to Andrew Karre at Carolrhoda, for publication Fall 2010, by Edward Necarsulmer IV at McIntosh & Otis (NA).

It was time to firm up that title. The old title, SPLINTERS, didn't stay in the running for too long. We narrowed it down to these three:

It Was Never About You

The Absolute Value of -1

One False Move

. . . before finally settling, very happily, on |-1|, obviously. With a title, it was blurb time. I had my "oh wow that would be amazing" list of hopefuls, and at the top of the list was Sara Zarr. One morning in June 2009, a moth flew into my ear. That evening, after staying far away from the internet most of the day, I got a nice little note from Ms. Zarr.

"I think you've pulled of something pretty special. Really, really good job, Steve."

It wouldn't be appropriate to paste the entire original email from Ms. Zarr, or--believe me--I would. I'd probably buy a billboard in Times Square. But moving on. The point is, I got my dream blurb, and it was cover time. The AE and I headed to Teens Know Best. Finally, more than a year after I'd sent the final draft to the AE, we had the results:











I couldn't be happier that my debut novel is officially out in the world. And now we have reached the contest!

It's a repeat contest, really, but I can't think of a better way to give out a couple of signed copies of |-1| and get the word out that it's officially released.

So here it is: Help me get the trailer out one more time. It debuted months ago, but I think it deserves to be a part of the book's release day, too. So tweet it, embed it, link it on your blog, share it on Facebook . . . however you want! But whatever you do, let me know. If you share it on Twitter, put @sbrezenoff at the end of your tweet. If you share it on Facebook, link to the absolute value of -1's official Facebook page. Or you can just let me know right here, in the comments, if that's easier. Every time you share the trailer, you'll get an entry, closing at midnight tonight, Central time.

Please, only US and Canada residents should enter, and only people 13 or over. Also, if you're offended by lots of cursing and/or drug references, please do NOT enter.

Chimes

My father hated wind chimes.

I suppose he wouldn't have had any problem with wind chimes kept indoors. His primary problem with them, in fact, was that they are typically kept outdoors, where they have the best chance of catching any wind. When they do, as any pre-schooler can tell you, they chime. Some are quite large and quite loud. Often, on a particularly windy day--say a breezy spring Sunday, when the neighbors' windows are open--the sound will ring frequently, up and down the block, invading others' homes. This bothered my dad, who believed a person in his own home shouldn't have to listen to someone else's wind chimes, no matter how pleasant the sound might be to the owner.

This made a tremendous amount of sense to me growing up, in no small part because my dad said it. For much of my life, even most of it, I pitched this idea on occasion, believing firmly that no one should be forced to hear wind chimes from anyone else's garden. I had never given it much thought, but instead absorbed it as a knee-jerk belief.

Now, as an adult, I have shed this particular nugget of justice theory. I like wind chimes quite a lot now, and I think I'd have to be in a pretty hostile mood to say a bad thing against them.

Why am I talking about wind chimes? In writing (and in reading), I have my share of knee-jerk opinions--the results of taking part in so many crit groups and workshops, and from reading instruction in creative writing. We all know a handful of these rules--cut to the chase; show don't tell; don't write in first/second/third person without a damn good reason--and they are often important to consider. But they are not, in and of themselves, justification for their own existence. That is, just because the rule exists, doesn't mean we have to follow it.

Without question, a writer should examine the work, consider the old chestnuts (especially "show, don't tell"; I think it's often misunderstood, however, and I'll probably get around to a decent rant on the subject at some point). The writer's workshoppers should apply every little crit trick they've picked up. But they are not gospel. A work in second person that doesn't get its legs till word two thousand, and that commits the "suddenly" sin on page thirteen, might still be a great work. If the writer dwells on these rules, he or she will become paralyzed by their weight.

So sit in your office with the windows open and enjoy those wind chimes. If they need to come down because they're really driving you batty, we can take it up with your neighbor once cooler heads prevail. But if the sound is actually pretty nice, go with it for a while.

Publishers Weekly review

Just a quick note. Publishers Weekly has reviewed The Absolute Value of -1, and since we're pretending SLJ and Kirkus don't exist, that makes it the first trade print publication to review my book! Here is some of the review. (For the next week, I suppose, you can read the whole thing here. Scroll down, and hurry--if you wait too long it will slip into the archives and require you to search, for which you need a subscription to publishersweekly.com, I think.)

Brezenoff … packs his first book for teenagers with emotion. … Lily, Noah, and Simon are friends … who are drifting apart. ... When Simon quits smoking and cautiously begins hanging out with another track team member, he alienates Lily and Noah, and continues to struggle with human connections. … Each of the three teenagers has a turn at first-person narration, revisiting the same scenario from different perspectives. Brezenoff nicely differentiates their voices and personalities, even while their narratives are bound together by the frustrations, self-doubt (and hatred), and pain they share.

Win, win, win!

Perhaps not all readers of the Exile follow the YA blogosphere quite closely, or perhaps you are relatively new to said 'sphere. Well, I'm here to tell you, Reviewer X is back. She's been back for a little while now--maybe two weeks?--after a long hiatus.

Last week, she hosted my pub story. Don't read it. Then, she announced a contest. If you help promote the contest--or even if you just go comment on the contest--you get an entry to win a copy of The Absolute Value of -1. There will be two winners! And, since I'll be sending the books out myself, I can even personalize a copy for you if you win! It doesn't get more exciting than this, folks.

Head over there and comment, and Tweet, and link on your blog! So many ways to earn an entry.

He was a skater boy!

First an apology. I recently changed my settings so I'd have to approve every comment. I assumed Blogger would email me to let me know a comment required approval. I was wrong. So, upon logging in today (to write this post), I found many comments awaiting approval! Now they are approved.

Of course, you can imagine how I felt with no comments on my most recent post: unloved, my dear readers. Well, much better now, so thanks to all for the congrats and shoe advice. I decided to go with the classic black-white checker slip-ons, rather than the black and charcoal ones pictured below. By the way, besides my undying love of the canvas sneakers of my youth (Chucks and Vans, that is), I wanted those kicks because a character* in Two Summers wears them. It is an homage--an homage that I can't wear in public because it will embarrass my wife, but an homage just the same.

In other news, School Library Journal and Kirkus have terrible taste. However, Second Star and Guys Lit Wire are wonderful and thrilling in every regard. Please go watch Kellie read some Lily:


And read GLW's thoughtful, in-depth, and fairly long review of |-1|.

*The character in Two Summers is not actually Avril Lavigne, who is in no way associated with this blog, except that once I saw her perform on the Radio City Music Hall sign as she rehearsed for her appearance on the MTV Awards. My then-office was less than a block away.

Announcement!

It's Sunday, but I'm in no mood to wait till business hours begin to post this news. (If you follow my Twitter or are my Facebook friend, you already heard this.) Here's an excerpt from Publishers Marketplace:

"July 23, 2010
Children's: Young Adult
Steve Brezenoff's TWO SUMMERS AROUND THE FIRE, to Andrew Karre at Carolrhoda Lab . . . for publication in Fall 2011. . . ."

In other words, YA MS the Third is now officially YA Novel the Second! Well, I guess we can just call it Two Summers around the Fire, since it says the name right there in the announcement. If the title changes, we can worry about that later.

Anyway, yay! To celebrate, I will buy these shoes:

Free books

It's another pointing post, and this time I won't be able to happy it up with a new sketch. That's because I'm too lazy to go fire up the attic computer and scanner.

But that's okay, because I am about to point you at another opportunity to win a copy of The Absolute Value of -1, bringing the current number of copies up for grabs to two!

As a reminder, you can still go comment over at Kurtis's blog for a chance to win there. Plus, the always classy Posh over at Forever Young Adult dropped a review yesterday, and -- I forgot to mention this when I twittered it and linked it on Facebook -- she's also got a copy to give away. So go comment there, too.

Of course, Amazon.com has started shipping the book already, so if you don't win either copy up for grabs, you can get your own right away anyway.