Unbreak My Heart Blog Tour: Author Interview with Melissa Walker + Review!

I am so excited to be hosting Melissa Walker for the Unbreak my Heart  blog tour! She stopped by to answer some questions about the book, writing habits, and pirate ships! Clem's story is such a wonderful one to read and it's definitely a perfect book for the summer. If you haven't added it to your TBR pile yet, what are you waiting for?!?

I loved Unbreak My Heart! The idea of spending an entire summer on a boat is so interesting. Is that something you’ve actually done, or was this story your way of living vicariously?

I haven't sailed for a whole summer, but I spent a lot of time on my parents' boat growing up, and there were a few long weekends where I thought I might go crazy in those close quarters. Of course, it's also really great--I love the water and I always wanted to use it as a setting.

Olive is one of my favorite little sibling characters, ever. I wish I had a sibling just like her, do you know where I can get one? Haha. Seriously, though, what made you decide to have Clem’s sister be so much younger than her? 

I think there's a pre-puberty wisdom that I wanted to have in the story, so Olive had to be pretty young. But super smart. I love her too.

James is great, one of the nicest guys in YA, it needed to be said! Other than your own, do you have a favorite YA male lead?

I fall for SO MANY book boys. One epic crush: Adam from Gayle Forman's IF I STAY and WHERE SHE WENT.

Contemporaries are my favorite. They just make me smile and I never get sick of them! What inspires you to write contemporary novels, instead of something with paranormal creatures?

I'm not good at making things up! I mean, things are fictionalized, but contemporary life is what I see in my head, even when I close my eyes.

Do you get inspired by music when writing? If so, what type of music inspires you most during the writing process?

Yes, I listen to the CHEESIEST music while I write. Songs make me really emotional. Seriously, sometimes I'll put on utter schmaltz, like Celine Dion, just to make myself get sappy.

Are there any quirky rituals you have to do before or during the writing process?

I like to have an iced coffee by my side while I write, but I don't have to touch a doorknob three times or anything like that!

Can you tell us anything about what you’ve got coming next? Circus performers? Identical quadruplets?

I have a letter in the DEAR TEEN ME anthology, out from Zest in late October. And I'm working on a new book but I'm not talking about it yet... stay tuned!

Just for fun! If you were the captain of a pirate ship, which literary characters would you want as your crew?

I would probably choose all secondary characters. If I pick main characters, they'll try to take over. They're pushy that way.

Thank you, so much, for answering some questions! This is the spot where you can add any subliminal messages to persuade people to run out and buy Unbreak My Heart  :0)

Thanks for having me! Um, if you pick up Unbreak My Heart this week and email me to tell me, I'll send you a free signed bookmark. Incentive!

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Release Date: May 22nd, 2012
Publisher: Bloomsbury Childrens
Format: eGalley
Age Group: Young Adult

Sophomore year broke Clementine Williams’ heart. She fell for her best friend’s boyfriend and long story short: he’s excused, but Clem is vilified and she heads into summer with zero social life.

Enter her parents’ plan to spend the summer on their sailboat. Normally the idea of being stuck on a tiny boat with her parents and little sister would make Clem break out in hives, but floating away sounds pretty good right now.

Then she meets James at one of their first stops along the river. He and his dad are sailing for the summer and he’s just the distraction Clem needs. Can he break down Clem’s walls and heal her broken heart?

Told in alternating chapters that chronicle the year that broke Clem’s heart and the summer that healed it, Unbreak My Heart is a wonderful dual love story that fans of Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Susane Colasanti will flock to.


I was so excited for this book and it was even better than I imagined. I loved that it was told, in part, in flashback's of the previous year's events. We got to get to know the Clem now and see the aftermath, then slowly we learned what it was that got her there. When we first meet Clem, she is not a happy person. She's lost her best friend and is stuck spending the summer sailing, with her family. Even though a sailboat is a very small space, I think it would be such a cool experience to spend a summer sailing. I've never really been on a boat and this book definitely made me want to go. There are a ton of sailing terms, plenty of which made no sense to me, but it didn't take away from the story.

I really liked Clem. Even though she was mopey a lot, I thought she was a fantastic character. I've never lost a best friend the way she did, but I can only imagine that I would have been feeling exactly the same way. Fortunately, she meets James right away and their budding friendship is good for Clem, no matter how hard she tries to fight it at first. I loved James! He was such a happy and genuine guy, and all he really wanted was for the people around him to be happy. He was also pretty funny, I often found myself cracking up at him. And Clem's little sister Olive, was most definitely my favorite! She was just so darn adorable, but also extremely perceptive for a ten year. Since they were all stuck on a boat together, Olive sort of becomes a stand-in best friend for Clem and their relationship was such a fun one to read.

In the flashback's we get to know Clem's former best friend, Amanda. They have such a great friendship and it's easy to see why Clem is taking the loss so hard. Remembering all of their good times helps Clem to realize what she truly misses and also serves to show us why what she did seemed like such a betrayal to Amanda. (Sidebar: In one of the flasbacks Clem and Amanda are trying to make ranch popcorn, it sounded delicious and inspired me to try and make some of my own, and that popcorn ended up being the best tasting popcorn. So thank you for that, Melissa!)

This book had excellent pacing and never felt rushed. You get to see real growth in Clem and her relationships, but none of it felt forced. I'm so glad I picked this one up, it's such a fabulous contemporary read and it's definitely one I won't be forgetting any time soon :0)

Interview w/ Jess Rothenberg: Author of "The Catastrophic History of You and Me"

It isn't much of a secret that I absolutely adored Jess Rothenberg's 2012 debut "The Catastrophic History of You and Me". Jess has been so sweet and gracious, in regards to my crazy fangirling, and was kind enough to do an interview for the blog! She really is the sweetest and I feel honored that she took some time to answer some questions for us. Since I haven't already said it enough, this is such a great book and you will definitely want to get your hands on it immediately!

Brie’s heart literally breaks in two, was that always the fate of her character or did she originally die in a different way?

Alas, that was always Brie’s fate!  The basic premise of the story (a girl dying of a literal broken heart) came to me during a time when I was going through a really intense break-up and felt like my own heart was breaking in two.  As anyone who’s ever been through that knows, having somebody you love admit they don’t feel the same isn’t just emotionally painful—it physical, too.  I’ve obviously never died from a broken heart (phew!), but there were definitely some moments during that period when my heart ached so much I thought I might.  Around the same time, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about “Broken Heart Syndrome”—a rare condition where a person really can die from the cardiac stress brought on by intense sadness or an emotional trauma.  And since first love tends to be all the more intense and emotional, I thought to myself, what if that happened to a teenage girl?  And voila!  CATASTROPHIC HISTORY was born!    

I love the song titles and lyrics that are at the beginning of the chapters! Are those songs you were listening to while writing, or were they put in after to tie in with the story?

I’m so glad you love them!  (I do too.)  Yes, those are the songs that inspired the story—a playlist I had on repeat for months as the book unfolded.  The 80s-songs, in particular, really informed the tone of the book and the arc of the characters, given some of the stuff we eventually discover about them.  (Shhh, no spoilers, I promise!)

Did you always aspire to be a YA author or did you start off writing in another genre?

I’ve loved telling stories for as long as I can remember and, as a little girl, always dreamed of becoming a writer (especially since “Unicorn” and “Mermaid” weren’t exactly solid career options).  I wrote a lot all through high school and college (mostly short stories and a lot of really bad poetry), but my heart was always in YA and children’s books.  When I graduated, I got a job working at a publishing house in New York, where I edited a ton of awesome YA and middle grade fiction (books like Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series, Lili St. Crow’s Strange Angels series, and Josh Lieb’s I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil & I Want to be Your Class President, to name just a few).  I always had stories of my own brewing on the backburner, but when I started writing the early pages of what eventually became CATASTROPHIC HISTORY, I wasn’t consciously writing it for a genre—it was more just me trying to make sense of the catastrophic dating world in New York!  I guess the truth is, I still feel like a teenager in my head most of the time and, given the kinds of books I’ve been editing for years, it made sense that the story ended up as YA.  But I like to think anyone who’s ever had his or her heart broken (whether they’re fifteen or thirty) will enjoy the story. 

While creating this story, what was your favorite part about the writing process? And do you have any quirky rituals?

My favorite part was definitely the way the characters kept surprising me!  There’s nothing more awesome than starting a chapter with a specific idea of how things are going to go, only to have the characters leap off the page and catch you totally off guard by doing or saying something you never saw coming.  And then suddenly the words are down in front of you and you’re reading them like “Wait, WHAT?”  Sometimes the surprises are a bit much, and you’ve got to rein things back in, but other times, it’s like getting a water balloon thrown at you—just the jolt of energy a story needs! 

As for rituals, for me it’s mostly about music.  I literally cannot write without it.  Sometimes it’s just one or a few songs that I’ll play on repeat for days and days until I’ve gotten them totally out of my system.  The songs on the CATASTROPHIC Playlist (which you can check out at http://jessrothenberg.com/playlist.html) were all a huge inspiration to the story, in one form or another, as I mentioned above.  

I know parents aren’t supposed to love one child more than another, but I’m dying to know which of the characters in the book is your favorite?

I’m a major animal lover, so my first instinct is to say Hamloaf, Brie’s family’s Basset Hound!  But the characters I truly love most are Brie and Patrick.  They were so real to me from the very beginning, and I loved watching them come alive, page after page.  It was hard to say goodbye when the book ended—I still miss hanging out with those two!

It’s no secret that I am absolutely in love with The Catastrophic History of You and Me! And I’m positive that everyone who gets a chance to read it will love it too! Tell me you have some more fantastic YA stories in the works, pretty please?

Aw, thank you, Sarah!  I’m so happy you loved it!  Yes, I am currently working away on my second YA novel (still under wraps for now), due out in 2013.  And after that… who knows?  I’ve got a lot of fun ideas for both YA and middle grade stories floating around in my head, so we’ll see!  : )

Just for fun, if you were the captain of a pirate ship, which literary characters would you want as your crew?

First of all, I love this question, since I’ve pretty much wanted to be the captain of a ship ever since falling in love with Avi’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle when I was nine.  So here goes:  First Mate would go to Katniss Everdeen, since she’s obviously super tough and awesome.  Plus, I’m assuming she could use her bow and arrow to catch fish for us, which is an instant added bonus.  Quartermaster would be Hermione Granger, since she’s always great in a crisis and, in the event anything broke aboard the ship, she could just wave her wand and be like “Reparo!” and we’d be back in business.  Sailing Master would be Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, since he could check his Seeing Stone to make sure we weren’t sailing in circles, which would be very likely with me at the helm.  Harriet the Spy would keep the daily Sailing Log (top-notch reporting skills and all), Stuart Little would be Boatswain because he’s brave, kind, and someone the crew could really look up to (okay, not literally, he’s a mouse), and Cook/Galley Master would be Willy Wonka for obvious reasons.  As for Swabbie… maybe Mary Anne from The Baby-sitters Club, since she’s pretty OCD about keeping things nice and neat?  Avast, ye scurvy swab!

Thank you for writing such an amazing book and for taking the time to answer some questions! :0)

My pleasure!!  Again, I’m so thrilled you loved THE CATASTROPHIC HISTORY OF YOU AND ME, Sarah.  Thanks so much for having me as a guest on your blog!

xo,

jess


Check out my Review of "The Catastrophic History of You and Me", right HERE!

Interview w/ "TOUCH" Author Jus Accardo

I am a huge fan of stories that have an evil corporation and TOUCH is a fantastic addition to that list! Why did you decide to write an evil corporation, instead of one specific villain?

Denazen was actually born in something I wrote years ago. The concept changed a bit when it moved to TOUCH, but the same general idea stayed the same. I’ve always loved it. I’m a very organic writer. I don’t plot at all. When I started writing, it wasn’t until Dez’s father came home, that I realized who he was. Marshal Cross. Head of Denazen. Boom. Denazen made the jump from one book to another.

I’d actually like to revisit the others. They’re all written within the same world. Maybe someday!

Kale doesn’t understand some of the most basic things, due to the way he grew up. Was it hard writing Dez’s explanations for things that, most of the time, don’t need explaining?

It was more fun than hard! It was like, hmm, someone walks up to you holding a CD, and asks me what they’re supposed to do with it. So many different reactions come to mind. Better, think of how horrible it would have to be to explain kissing to a hot guy your own age? (that was one of my faves BTW) Can you say awkward…? So, so much fun to write!

While creating this story, what was your favorite part about the writing process? And do you have any quirky rituals?

I can’t write with my shoes on. And I must have coffee. And cheese. (real cheese—none of that fake crap!) As for my favorite part, I love when the characters surprise me. I see things moving along and BOOM. The story takes a hard right.

Did you always plan for this to be a young adult story? What about writing for the teen audience do you like the most?

TOUCH was always a YA.

Writing YA is amazing. It’s all about firsts. Strong emotions and learning to find yourself. There’s really nothing about it I don’t absolutely love.

Now that you’ve gotten me completely hooked on this series, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, can you give us any hints of what’s to come for our favorite characters in the next book?

Hmmm *evil grin*

Dez and Kale aren’t going to have it easy. They’ve got a lot of bumps ahead and some of them are mega-mountain sized. I think some of the characters are going to surprise you—I know they did me. There are more secrets and betrayals, and there’s a chance someone might die ;)

Just for fun, if you were the captain of a pirate ship, which literary characters would you want as your crew?

This is awesome!

Since it’s a boat (and, um, I know squat about sailing) I feel like I should probably say Ishmael…

But really, I’d want Cal Leandros (Rob Thurman). He’d be awesome to keep people in line. I’d have to have Suze along (Meg Cabot) because I could totally see us hanging out. Jane True (Nicole Peeler) and Alex (Jennifer Armentrout) would round off my girl-group peeps. Of course we’d need some eye can—err—muscle—so we’d have to have Clayton Danvers (Kelley Armstrong), Dimitri (Richelle Mead) and Graves (Lili St. Crow).

Hmm. Looking at that list, I’m not sure we’d get very far…but it’d be an awesome party boat!

 
Thanks for such a wonderful book and thank you for answering some questions!

It was fun! Thanks for inviting me J

Check out my review for TOUCH here!

Jus Accardo is the author of YA paranormal romance and urban fantasy
fiction. A native New Yorker, she lives in the middle of nowhere with her
husband, three dogs, and sometimes guard bear, Oswald. Her first book,
Touch, is due out in November 2011 from Entangled Publishing. She is
represented by Kevan Lyon of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.