Celebrating Banned Books Week
It’s Banned Books Week! And I thought it was a good time to give thanks to the parents and grandparents who raised me for letting me grow up reading whatever I wanted. Thank you! I do not have children and I would never presume to tell anyone how to raise theirs, but I’d just like to say: this worked for me. I am a firm believer that books are self-censoring. TV and movies are another story—they wash over you without giving you the chance to object—but if a child isn’t ready for a book, they put it down. I heard the editor Hadley Dyer speak at the Word on the Street festival in Toronto...
Read MoreSome great news for Witchlanders!
I recently got two fabulous pieces of news from my editor at Atheneum, Caitlyn Dlouhy. The first is that Witchlanders has been chosen from over 160 books to be one of 20 ABC New Voices selections, a list from the American Booksellers Association that recognizes excellence in a debut MG or YA novel. AND I was reviewed in the Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books who said, “Fans of contemplative, psychologically rich (but no less action-packed) fantasies à la Ursula Le Guin will welcome this warm, inventive debut and wait eagerly for the implied sequel.” Get OUT!...
Read MoreWhy Fantasy?
When I was a child, people told me so often that I read fantasy for escape that I started to believe them. I did like to be transported to other worlds. And people did seem to think my life was something I should want to escape from. I don’t talk much about my childhood. This is because, in my mind, it was a good one, but when I start to give people the details—my mother’s s schizophrenia, my father’s death, living with a number of different families—they tend to want to sit me down and make me a cup of tea. Maybe I read fantasy because the problems in contemporary novels of that time...
Read MoreBut Enough about Me…Some OTHER YA & MG Fantasies I’m Excited to Read This Fall
Well, the blog tour is over, the Kindle winner has been announced, and I am officially sick of myself. I missed Random Acts of Publicity last week because…I was too busy blathering on about my own book! But there are some OTHER wonderful fantasies coming out this fall that I’m very excited to read. (And by fantasies I mean fantasies and paranormals–I tend to use the term broadly.) Whenever I do a post like this I always feel I have to preface it by saying: I don’t know what they heck I’m talking about. By which I mean: There are many, many other bloggers that are more up-to-date...
Read MoreCongratulations Contest Winners!
Woo-hoo! Thank you! Thank you! to everyone who made comments on my blog tour. The lovely Heather and Danny over at Kismet Blog Tours have crunched the numbers (there were over 650 entries!) And now…I have some winners to announce! (Wow, this is fun!) First off, the winners of a copy of Witchlanders from the four surprise tour stops are as follows: Book Sake (Winner from The Zealous Reader) Indigo (Winner from Rayment’s Reading Rants and Rambles) Jessy (Winner from YA Booklover Blog) Rebecca (Winner from Midnight Bloom Reads) Yay! Heather and Danny will be contacting the four of...
Read MoreAbout Me
Hi! I'm Lena, a young adult fantasy author from Toronto.