Sunday, June 24, 2012

MMGM: GIVEAWAY & INTERVIEW w/ JOANNE LEVY

- Win a copy of HANGING OFF JEFFERSON'S NOSE ( Ends 7/2)
- Win a copy of NIKOLAS & CO. by Kevin McGill (End 7/6)

- Win a copy of LIES BENEATH by Anne Brown (Ends 6/25)


 Welcome to Marvelous Middle Grade Monday (MMGM), a weekly event hosted by author Shannon Messenger. For a list of other MMGM posts, click HERE.

SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE
by Joanne Levy
Bloomsbury
Ages 8 to 12
Release Date:  July 3rd

After she’s hit by lightning at a wedding, twelve-year-old Lilah Bloom develops a new talent: she can hear dead people. Among them, there’s her overopinionated Bubby Dora; a prissy fashion designer; and an approval-seeking clown who livens up a séance. With Bubby Dora leading the way, these and other sweetly imperfect ghosts haunt Lilah through seventh grade, and help her face her one big fear: talking to—and possibly going to the seventh-grade dance with—her crush, Andrew Finkel.

This week marks the release of Joanne Levy's debut middle grade novel Small Medium At Large.  Joanne shares a few thoughts on her book and writing with us today. Don't miss the chance to win a copy of the book. Details are at the end of this post.



1.  Tell us about your book in one sentence. After being hit by lightning, Lilah Bloom can suddenly hear ghosts, including her dead grandmother and the father of her major crush!

2.  What inspired you to write this story. I woke up one day with the title in my head. I was working on different projects at the time, so I put it aside, but it never stopped nagging me! About a year later, I figured I’d better write the book to go along with it. The book started out as a YA, but thanks to the wisdom of a very smart editor (and not even the one who bought the book) who thought my voice would work better for tweens, I rewrote it as MG.

3.  Tell us a little about your journey to publication. Oh, it’s been a long, long, long road. I’m talking about a decade and many bumps along the way. I believe SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE was the 12th and 15th book I wrote (YA version was #12 and MG was number #15). Even once I rewrote SM@L, we had a couple of almost-sales, but it still took almost ten months to finally find a wonderful home at Bloomsbury.

4.  What books did you read when you were young? I read The Chronicles of Narnia over and over (and over and over) and loved them so much that I even bought a new set as an adult. I was a big fan of fantasy stories and as a teen, I devoured Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books and Guy Gavriel Kay’s THE SUMMER TREE Trilogy, reading them over and over until they fell apart.

5.  What books do you enjoy reading now? I still enjoy fantasy-type books, but my tastes are much more varied now. For pure escapism, I’m totally into historical romances and J.R.Ward’s books. But being a member of The Apocalypsies, The Class of 2k12 and The Debutante Ball means I am surrounded by amazing debut books. There is so much awesomeness out there right now from new authors and more to come. Recently I read Lynne Kelly’s CHAINED (MG), SCARLET by AC Gaughen (YA) and LITTLE GALE GUMBO (Adult fiction) by Erika Marks and was totally blown away by all of these books. My TBR pile is huge and I’m loving reading all these debuts and am very much looking forward to reading THE ROCK OF IVANORE, too!


6.  What can we expect from you in the future? Well I’m in limbo right now, but I’m still writing MG and some YA. Nothing is set in stone yet as coming next from, so I can’t really share any news, but I’ll be keeping people posted on my website at joannelevy.com and my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JoanneLevyAuthor


EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:

Wait a minute, I thought as his words sunk in. I was hit by lightning?
I stared at Dad.
He nodded. “Really.”
I turned and looked at my mom. “I’m sorry about your honeymoon.”
“She’ll get over it. She’s concerned about you,” someone, a woman, said.
My mom’s lips weren’t moving, so I swivelled my head around; there were no other women in the room.
“What did you say?” I asked Mom.
She didn’t say it. I did. Oh, Lilah.”
I was looking at my mom, and there were no words coming out of her mouth, yet a female was speaking to me.
Okay, what’s going on? I was clearly losing it…
“I guess you can’t see me,” the voice said. “But I’m here. Lilah, it’s me, your grandmother, Dora.”
Huh?





GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

To be eligible to win a copy of Joanne Levy's book, just fill out the rafflecopter form below.

This giveaway will run through July 9th.

23 comments:

  1. I love the title and can definitely understand it haunting you (pardon the pun). I'm glad you found what looks like a really fun and entertaining story to go with it!

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  2. This sounds like it would be a fun book to read and share.

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  3. I love the title of the book! It's very cute and makes the reader give it some thought before putting it down!

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  4. The title is great, and this cover is better than what I thought I saw originally. Looking forward to reading it.

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  5. Thie book sounds great! Would love a chance to win! julierupert@gmail.com

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  6. Thanks for the chance to win this. The book sounds very interesting.
    The first time I saw the cover, I didn't see the "at" in the title and couldn't figure out why someone would name a book Small Medium Large. I thought it was a book about weight loss or something.

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  7. Sounds like such a great story!

    And your journey to publication inspires me to keep at it.

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  8. I heard about this book a couple of months ago. So glad that it's nearly here. Thanks for offering a copy.

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  9. This sounds like a really sweet book! Great interview.

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  10. Thanks so much for having me here today, Laurisa! And Barbara - I used to think my long-road-to-publication story was embarassing, but now I share it freely, because I want people to know that success can come at the end of a long road-and it still counts as success! Glad you took some good from it!
    Thanks for all the love, everyone!

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  11. Clever title, I can see why it was nagging you for so long. Would love to read the book, too.

    I truly admire authors with a long journey to publication--those stories are the most inspiring!

    Best of luck!

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  12. Sounds really good!! Thanks for the chance to win!

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  13. I've been waiting for this book! It's been on my GoodReads to-read list for about six months now. Thanks for such an interesting little interview. It's so amazing to me, to read so many authors stories and hear the same long journey to publication. I'm glad you stuck with it, Joanne :) The key is to ALWAYS keep writing, right? :)

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  14. thanks for the great interview. i love hearing about the different things it took for each author to reach publication. i've been waiting for this book for what feels like forever, and i'm so glad it's finally almost out! can't wait to read it : )

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  15. After she’s hit by lightning at a wedding, twelve-year-old Lilah Bloom develops a new talent: she can hear dead people. Among them, there’s her overopinionated Bubby Dora; a prissy fashion designer; and an approval-seeking clown who livens up a séance. With Bubby Dora leading the way, these and other sweetly imperfect ghosts haunt Lilah through seventh grade, and help her face her one big fear: talking to—and possibly going to the seventh-grade dance with—her crush, Andrew Finkel.

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  16. Fun interview. Interesting how the story shifted between YA and MG.

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  17. So much love here! Thanks for your nice words, everyone. I can't wait for the book to release next week!

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  18. This sounds like such a fun read!

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  19. Book sounds great and it's now on on my to read list :) Thanks for the chance to win it!

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  20. Awesome, Sounds like a good read =)

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