Upcoming Event: Compelling Reads Tour

I know I said this blog was more going to be an accounting of events and a calendar, but this is one of the Bookish Events I'm definitely planning to go to.  Plus right now the authors on the tour are running like the coolest contest ever.  I know this probably isn't the best way to share information about the tour since I'm still putting the blog together and I haven't gotten to the part where I start really trying to get the word out that I made this blog.  I figured I should at least finishing putting in what I can find on the Calendar before I start hunting for potential followers.  However just in case anyone happens upon this blog before then you have to check out this tour!  Not only is it focused on areas that anyone in the Carolinas can feasible get to without needing a hotel and a few days off work, but it's got a TON of authors attending.

Before I go on gushing lets talk the contest because WOW!  A copy of every book SIGNED PLUS $100 gift card!  That has to be like the coolest contest ever!  To enter jump over to Hypable at the previous link and check out the Rafflecopter there.

As you've probably noticed when it comes to books and Bookish events, you've hit on the one topic where I forget I'm in my 30s and start gushing and fangirling like a teenager, especially when they're in the YA genre.  More adults should really give this genre a chance because in my personal opinion some of the best writers of our time are writing in this genre.  They aren't in my opinion to be missed.  I've been planning to go to this tour ever since information about it showed up in my Facebook Feed and I realized it was not only on a weekend, but close enough to drive to.  Even when things are close with three kids we have to consider how long an event could take and if they'll be home in time to get a decent night's sleep for school.  When things are an hour away and don't get over until eight or later I don't really feel that's the case so we don't go and of course are unhappy that we can't go.  So when a signing offers so many authors and has tour stops nearby on a weekend, that's something to be excited about!

When we learned it was headed our way, and it was on one of my husbands long weekends so he'll actually be here that weekend I called up my best friend whose daughter wants to be a writer.  I feel a certain kinship to my best friend's daughter because not only do we share the same dream, but we read a lot of the same books.  My daughter likes to read too, but she's more of a one maybe two books a month sort of reader.  She gets excited about these events with me but we don't get to talk about books that often because she's a teenage girl that's all into the teenage part of that.  She's into clothes, jewelry, make up, hair, art and unfortunately boys, as well.  And it's awesome that she's got all these diverse interests with the exception of the interest in boys because I'm her mom and like the fantasy of her one day joining a convent even though I know this is unlikely to happen.  The thing is having the unfulfilled dream of writing since I was, God, I don't remember ever not having it, so lets just say really little, I've always been bookish and books, writing and words have always been my biggest interest.  As an example I can tell you that I honestly never learned how to properly apply nail polish and my makeup gets used at most once a year, usually not even that.  My biggest complaint about prom was everyone wanting to pile makeup on my face.  My idea of doing my hair as a teen was a ponytail, as an adult it's a bun. This is how I do my hair every single day because it's no fuss and out of my way.  If I own any clothes that are actually in fashion it's a fluke because I bought them for comfort.  And when it comes to art, she didn't get her talent from me, I can't draw a straight line with a straight edge.  Books are about the only interest I share with my daughter and she's not nearly as into them as I am.  She does however have a ton in common with my best friend.  My best friend has always been so much better at being a girl than I ever was.  My daughter has a talent for it too.  My best friend's daughter reads as much as I do, trades book recommendations with me and enjoys avoiding shopping as much as I do.  She dresses for comfort not fashion and spends a lot of her free time putting words on a page.  Some day even if I never achieve my own dreams, I'm going to be blogging to you about this little girl and her upcoming book event.  My best friend and I have joked numerous times that we had the girls around each other so much as babies their personalities were somehow switched.  My daughter is like a miniature version of my best friend and hers is like a miniature version of me.  Luckily since we've been friends since we were younger than they are we happen to know the contrasting personalities fit well together and we both enjoy really good relationships with our children.  My biggest regret about our daughters is we've never lived close enough to each other to have them in the same school and around each other enough to forge the same kind of bond I have with my best friend.  They get along, they're sort of friends, but they've yet two realize how much these personality types compliment each other.  Anyway I'm off topic here, I ramble, I know and I never have thought in a linear manner.  My blog is a reflection of that.  I called up my best friend and told her that not only was there this big book tour down here but they were focusing their talks on writing, do you think you're daughter might want to come down and spend the weekend with us to join us.  I have a couple other plans for the weekend too, but this was the main draw because I didn't think her daughter would want to miss this.  Within two days we were making plans for her to come with us and hitch a ride from upstate New York to North Carolina and back again with my husband.  My best friend tells me she's as excited as I am about this upcoming event.

You'll notice that I keep repeating my best friend and my best friend's daughter instead of saying names but that's not something I'd give out without permission.  I hope anyone that reads this happens to understand.  In November I'll be doing a post with tons of photos of the Chapel Hill, NC event because that's the one we're attending and gushing more about what actually happens there.  You can find that particular event plugged in on the events calendar here.  I'll get the rest of the tour put into the events Calendar soon.  Though it's happening on Sunday and if I remember I'll Instagram or Twitter a couple of photos while I'm there, I probably won't post until Tuesday because that's the day my husband heads back to New York and I don't do much other than stuff with my family when he's here. But my point without all that extra information is that I will be posting about one of the tour stops in November shortly after it happens and I promise to include as many photos as I can, with the exception of the ones of my kids and friends kids and I've explained my fears about that in my previous post.  This time I'm bringing extra batteries, I learned my lesson at Bookmarks about that.  So I'll gush more about what actually happens at a tour stop in my next Compulsion Reads Tour Post in November.  (I'm attending one other event prior to that so it's at least a couple posts away)

Lets talk who's all going to be a part of this tour.  Now not every author will be at every stop, the stop we're going to will have seven of these awesome authors, but not all of them.  But I'm going to do this as a list with links to their online info so you can check to see if you're favorite author is going to be at the tour stop you want to attend. Anyway onto to the list.

Martina Boone was born in Prague and spoke several languages before learning English. She fell in love with words and never stopped delighting in them. 

She's the founder of AdventuresInYAPublishing.com, a Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers site, and YASeriesInsiders.com, a site devoted to encouraging literacy and all this YA Series.

 From her home in Virginia, where she lives with her husband, children, and Auggie the wonder dog, she enjoys writing contemporary fantasy set in the kinds of magical places she'd love to visit. When she isn't writing, she's addicted to travel, horses, skiing, chocolate flavored tea, and anything with Nutella on it. 

If you like romance dripping with mystery, mayhem, Spanish moss, and a bit of magic, she hopes you'll look forward to meeting Barrie, Eight, Cassie, Pru, Seven and the other characters of Watson Island. 

You can find Martina online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Melissa Marr grew up believing in faeries, ghosts, and various other creatures. After teaching college lit for a decade, she applied her fascination with folklore to writing. 

Melissa writes fiction for adults, teens, and children. Her books have been translated into 28 languages to date and been bestsellers in the US (NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal) as well as various countries overseas. She is best known for the Wicked Lovely series for teens and Graveminder for adults.

You can find Melissa online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Kimberley Griffiths Little was born in San Francisco, but now lives in New Mexico with her husband and three sons in a solar adobe home on the banks of the Rio Grande. Her award-winning writing has been praised as "fast-paced and dramatic," with "characters painted in memorable detail" and "beautifully realized settings." 

Kimberley adores anything old and musty with a secret story to tell and makes way too many cookies while writing.

You can find Kimberley online at her website, Facebook, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Wendy Higgins: After earning a bachelor's in Creative Writing from George Mason University and a master's in Curriculum and Instruction from Radford, Wendy taught high school English until becoming a mommy. Writing Young Adult (YA) stories gives her the opportunity to delve into the ambiguities of those pivotal, daunting, and exciting years before adulthood. 

She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, daughter, and son. 

You can find Wendy online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Jessica Spotswood is the author of The Cahill Witch Chronicles. She grew up in a tiny one-stoplight town in Pennsylvania. Now she lives in a gentrifying hipster neighbourhood in Washington, D.C. with her playwright husband and a cuddly cat named Monkey. She's never happier than when she's immersed in a good story, and swoony kissing scenes are her favourite.

You can find Jessica online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Leah Cypess wrote her first story in first grade. The narrator was an ice-cream cone in the process of being eaten. In fourth grade, she wrote her first book, about a girl who was shipwrecked on a desert island with her faithful and heroic dog (a rip-off of both The Black Stallion and all the Lassie movies). 

After selling her first story while in high school, she gave in to her mother's importuning to be practical and majored in biology at Brooklyn College. She then went to Columbia Law School and practiced law for almost two years. She kept writing and submitting in her spare time, and finally, a mere 15 years after her first short story acceptance, she sold her first novel. 

 Leah currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and children.

You can find Leah online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Kristen-Paige Madonia's debut novel, Fingerprints of You, was published August 2012 by Simon & Schuster and recent fiction can be found in Upstreet, New Orleans Review, American Fiction: Best Previously Unpublished Stories by Emerging Writers, and Sycamore Review. She was awarded a 2011 Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee Williams Scholarship and has received fellowships from the Hambidge Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony. She currently lives in Charlottesville, VA where she teaches creative writing and is at work on her second novel.

You can find Kristen online at her website, Facebook, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Joy N. Hensley is a former middle school teacher. She used to spend her twenty-minute lunch breaks hosting author Skype chats for her students. Once upon a time she went to a military school on a dare. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two children, finding as many ways as she can to never do another push-up again.

You can find Joy online at her website, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads,

Jodi Meadows lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her husband, a cat, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed book addict, and has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided against becoming an astronaut.

You can find Jodi online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Diana Peterfreund has been a costume designer, a cover model, and a food critic. Her travels have taken her from the cloud forests of Costa Rica to the underground caverns of New Zealand (and as far as she’s concerned, she’s just getting started). Diana graduated from Yale University in 2001 with dual degrees in Literature and Geology, which her family claimed would only come in handy if she wrote books about rocks. Now, this Florida girl lives with her husband and their puppy in Washington D.C., and writes books that rock 

Her first novel, Secret Society Girl (2006), was described as “witty and endearing” by The New York Observer and was placed on the New York Public Library’s 2007 Books for the Teen Age list. The follow-up, Under the Rose (2007) was deemed “impossible to put down” by Publisher’s Weekly, and Booklist called the third book, Rites of Spring (Break) (2008), “an ideal summer read.” The final book in the series, Tap & Gown, will be released in 2009. All titles are available from Bantam Dell. 

She also contributed to the non-fiction anthologies, Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, edited by Jennifer O’Connell (Pocket Books, 2007), The World of the Golden Compass, edited by Scott Westerfeld (BenBella Books, 2007), and Through the Wardrobe, edited by Herbie Brennan (BenBella Books, 2008). 

Her first young adult novel, Rampant, an adventure fantasy about killer unicorns and the virgin descendants of Alexander the Great who hunt them, will be released by Harper Collins in 2009. When she’s not writing, Diana volunteers at the National Zoo, adds movies she has no intention of watching to her Netflix queue, and plays with her puppy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Rio.

You can find Diana online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Gigi Amateau's first book for young adults, Claiming Georgia Tate, was published by Candlewick Press in 2005. That title was selected as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age and hailed by author Judy Blume: "It's rare and exciting to discover a talented new writer like Gigi Amateau." The Wall Street Journal called the book "an ambitious push into the young adult market." 

She is also the author of A Certain Strain of Peculiar, a Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year, and Chancey of the Maury River, A William Allen White Masters list title for grades 3-5. Come August, Come Freedom, her first work of historical fiction, was named a 2013 Jefferson Cup Honor title and chosen by Bank Street College as a Best Children's Book of the Year. In 2012, Gigi received a Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts from Richmond magazine.

You can find Gigi online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Claudia Gray has worked as a lawyer, a journalist, a disc jockey, and an extremely poor waitress. Her lifelong interests in old houses, classic movies, vintage style, and history all play a part in creating the world of Evernight.

You can find Claudia online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

S.E. Green or Shannon Greenland is the author of the award winning Middle Grade spy series, The Specialists, which was an ALA top pick and a National Reader’s Choice Recipient. Killer Instinct marks her debut into the world of thrillers. 

She was raised in Tennessee, but now calls North Florida home. KILLER INSTINCT is her debut young adult thriller.

You can find S.E. Green online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Meagan Spooner grew up reading and writing every spare moment of the day, while dreaming about life as an archaeologist, a marine biologist, an astronaut. She graduated from Hamilton College in New York with a degree in playwriting, and has spent several years since then living in Australia. She’s traveled with her family all over the world to places like Egypt, South Africa, the Arctic, Greece, Antarctica, and the Galapagos, and there’s a bit of every trip in every story she writes. 

She currently lives and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, but the siren call of travel is hard to resist, and there’s no telling how long she’ll stay there. 

 In her spare time she plays guitar, plays video games, plays with her cat, and reads. 

Meagan Spooner is the author of SKYLARK and SHADOWLARK, the first two books in a young adult fantasy trilogy available NOW from Carolrhoda Lab/Lerner Books. She is also the co-author of THESE BROKEN STARS, the first in the young adult science fiction Starbound Trilogy available now from Disney-Hyperion. She is represented by Josh Adams of Adams Literary.

You can find Meagan online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Beth Revis  wrote her first books as a student in classrooms, when the professors did not hold her interest and she jotted down stories instead of taking notes. 

Beth writes science fiction and fantasy novels for teens. Her debut novel, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, will be published by Razorbill/Penguin in Spring 2011. Beth is represented by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House. 

Beth also runs a blog on writing and is a participant of a group blog by debut dystopian authors.

You can find Beth online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Megan Shepherd grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where her family has owned and operated an independent bookstore for over 35 years. Shepherd attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in international studies and went on to live and work in Costa Rica, Senegal, Scotland, Spain, and many other countries. Now, Shepherd has returned to Western North Carolina and is a full-time writer of young adult novels.

You can find Megan online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.

Tracy Clark is a young-adult writer because she believes teens deserve to know how much they matter and that regardless of what they’re going through, they aren't alone. In other words, she writes books for her teen self. She grew up a “Valley Girl” in Southern California but now lives in her home state of Nevada, in a small town at the base of the Sierra Foothills. Her two children teach her the art of distraction and are a continuous source of great dialogue. She’s an unapologetic dog person who is currently owned by a cat. 

Tracy was the recipient of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Work in Progress Grant. A two-time participant in the prestigious Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program where she was lucky enough to be mentored by bestselling author, Ellen Hopkins, who taught her so much about the art of writing and cured her of her ellipsis addiction. 

Her debut novel was inspired by her enchantment with metaphysics as a teen, seeing it as the real magic in life. Tracy is a part-time college student, a private pilot, and an irredeemable dreamer.

You can find Tracy online at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Goodreads, and Amazon.

So that's the list of authors participating in this tour and can I just again saw WOW, that's a ton of amazing writers.  If I was rich with no other commitments I'd want to hit every tour stop just for the chance to meet all of them.  Unfortunately that's not the case, but we will be attending the Chapel Hill Signing and get to meet seven of these amazing authors.  As an avid reader I've read a lot of their works and they're all just amazingly talented.  (I'm also terrible at updating Goodreads so it actually only lists about maybe a percent of what I've actually read.  I'm trying to be better about that.)  As always on the bios on my posts the author photos came from a Google image search and the bios are copied from one of the find online web links.  The babbling before that section was all me.

Anyway in conclusion huge tour that you should definitely come out for if you can, great contest to promote the tour and I'll be making another post in November to talk about how great the tour stop we attended was with as many photos as I can put on my camera.  Thanks for reading :)