Waiting on Wednesdays #4

Giving this meme yet another shot.  I've been pretty bad at the weekly stuff, so as you're reading this post just know I actually wrote it SUNDAY, because I am determined to be better at it and not forget, as I tend to do.  Anyway, it's hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, so you should go check it out!

My can't-wait-to-read, pre-release book for this week is...

Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum.

Again, there was no cover for this one yet, so I'm using Meldrum's other novel Madapple, a.k.a. one of my favorite books ever.  Period.  Madapple is one of the few books I went out of my way to contact the author for and let her know how much I loved it - I'm trying to do that more often!  Anyway, because she's really nice, Christina got back to me and told me about this book - it's no secret, you can check out the Goodreads page here - and I immediately wrote it down on my to-read list.  Why?  Because, erm, I LOVED Madapple, and because I love plants and science, and it sounds like that's what this one will be about, too.  It's going to be an adult novel, but this will definitely be one I buy and read as soon as it comes out!

There's not a release date yet, but I'll be keeping an eye on it!  What are you waiting on this Wednesday?  Link to your posts in the comments!

What makes me follow someone on Twitter (and what most certainly doesn't)

If you "know" me online, it's probably through Twitter.  I confess to being addicted.  I do try to keep the TMI stuff you really don't want to know to a minimum.  I try to be a conscientious Twitterer that shares just enough personal info to not be a robot, but also shares links and information pertinent to the writing and blogging world.  Please tell me in the comments if I've succeeded!

But, anyway, finding all of those links to share means following other conscientious Twitterers, and I thought I'd share what makes one, in my humble opinion.  I ALWAYS check profiles before following to see what people share - I hate annoying or useless tweet feeds showing up in my stream!  So, here are some of my "rules":

1. GIVE ME LOTS AND LOTS OF LINKS, if you hadn't gotten the idea already.  I love when you share cool writing and blogging articles, writing and blogging news (especially release dates, cover releases, etc.), and even inspirational or intriguing news to pique my imagination.
2. It's even better when you share your opinions on said links, above.  Something as simple as "this disgusts me" or, on a more positive note, "this is fantastic!" really makes me want to read the article.
3. Be funny.  Laugh at yourself.  I like people like YA author Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) who talk about accidentally putting plastic in their blended banana smoothie.  That kind of stuff pops up in the corner of my screen, makes me laugh, and brightens my day!
4. Be professional.  Use as much proper grammar and spelling as often as you can, and be respectful when you share your opinions.  This makes a HUGE difference.
5. Within reason, reply to my @ mentions.  This makes you a "real person" in my eyes, and I like the connection.  Twitter is about networking, so snatch that opportunity and run with it!
6. Also within reason, ask opinions.  Questions like "So, tweeps - should I read ___ or ___ first?" beg an answer, which promotes @ mentions, which promotes networking.  (See above.)
7. Follow fewer people than are following you.  I like people who keep a margin of five or ten people between following and followers.  This just seems professional to me.  However, if you're nice and all that, it's not really that big of a deal.  This works both ways, too - if you have 20,000 followers and are only following 10 people, that comes across as elitist.  If you have that many followers, you should be less stingy with your followings!
8. Respectfully share what's important to you.  Twibbons and links are great ways to do this.  I love people who have causes.  Author Mary Calhoun Brown (@marycalhounbrow) has autism awareness, Laurie Halse Anderson (@halseanderson) has Save Libraries, Ellen Hopkins (@EllenHopkinsYA) is all about teaching poetry in schools...etc.  Just don't go completely overboard; try and show some variety, too.
9. Participate in chats pertaining to your focus, presumably writing, reading, or blogging.  There's tons!  #kidlitchat, #yalitchat, #scribechat, #scriptchat, #litchat, #scifichat, the list goes on and on.  Find the people that run the chats, follow them, mark the times and dates on your calendar, log on to TweetChat.com, and participate.  It's a great way to *meet* new people, get new followers, find new people to follow, and talk about mutual interests!  They often have topics, so do read up on those beforehand.
10. Use hashtags conscientiously, either to be funny or to network.  Just don't overuse them.  Things like #ohmyachinghead are funny the first time, but not the fifteenth.  Stuff like #amwriting, #writegoal, #reading, etc. is neat because you can explore what others are doing.

There are some things that are my major pet peeves on Twitter, though, and will probably earn you an unfollow:

1. Don't be disrespectful.  I operate on a three-strikes-and-your-out system - more than three comments about how famous people haven't earned it, gay people are too outspoken, conservatives are narrow-minded, liberals are evil, WHATEVER, and you have an unfollow.  Respectfully disagree, don't generalize.
2. Don't use improper grammar.  I understand Tweetshrinking, but if you can't be bothered with even a short, five-word message, I don't feel the need to follow you.
3. Don't follow tons and tons more people than are following you.  You start to look like a spammer.
4. Don't @ mention people gratuitously.  Use it if you have something to say, don't fish for a follow-back or retweet.  That may come off as a little strong, but it annoys me when it shows up in my feed.
5. Don't complain about school, work, how your life sucks, or any number of things CONSTANTLY.  Everyone's guilty of this every once in awhile, but please keep it to a minimum.
6. Don't self-deprecate all the time.  Have a little self-respect and people will respect you!
7. Don't be self-involved and elitist all the time.  Generally, we don't care how much you hate all of those people who don't understand you or who waste your time.  A lot of literary agents do this, generally with good reason, but it still drives me nuts when they're elitist about it.  However, when they share anecdotes with humor, it's entertaining.  (I love @colleenlindsay for that.)
8. Don't be a robot.  I like it when you share little things about the weather or about how you're excited for dinner, or how well your work-in-progress is coming, as long as it's not a constant TMI feed.  Share links, but don't let that be the only thing you do!
9. Don't e way too personal.  I don't want to know if you shampooed and shaved your legs this morning.  No, really.  Unless you can do it with humor, and then, don't overdo it.
10.  Don't have fights on Twitter.  Do it on Facebook or in your email inboxes, if you must, but I hate watching a scandal unfold.  It depresses me.

Anyway, I hope I commit the do's often enough and don't do the don'ts, and I hope this is useful!  Do you have any Twitter pet peeves of your own?  Please share in the comments!

Middle Grade Monday - Gregor the Overlander

I have a 10-year-old sister who is passionately in love with middle grade lit, not to mention a 5-year-old little brother who's into more of the same, so I thought I'd share some of their favorites (and my old favorites) with you guys!  This week I thought I'd talk about...

The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins!

Yes, yes, The Hunger Games are fabulous and I like them better and they appeal to a wider age range and all that, but before HG there was Gregor the Overlander, and I was a fan for years!  Actually, as all of my Twitter followers probably know, I remain an evangelistic fan for these books!

When eleven-year-old Gregor follows his little sister through a grate in the laundry room of their New York apartment, he hurtles into the dark Underland beneath the city. There, humans live uneasily beside giant spiders, bats, cockroaches, and rats, but the fragile peace is about to fall apart.
Gregor wants no part of a conflict between these creepy creatures. He just wants to find his way home. But when he discovers that a strange prophecy foretells a role for him in the Underland's uncertain future, he realizes it might be the only way to solve the biggest mystery of his life. Little does he know his quest will change him and the Underland forever.
Rich in suspense and brimming with adventure, Suzanne Collin's debut marked a thrilling new talent, and introduced a character no young reader will ever forget.

Yes, it's a "prophecy book".  I'm starting to get very tired of them.  However, Suzanne Collins took a spectacularly intriguing take on the whole thing that's just believable enough to work but suspends belief enough to be a fascinating sci-fi/fantasy world!  Gregor is a great, well-developed character that is implied as a PoC (person of color) without whacking you in the face with his *diversity*, and Luxa is a complex female character that manages to kick butt AND have emotions.  It's a great change from much MG fiction, which feels like watered-down YA - this series stands in its own right.

I especially liked the third, fourth, and fifth books, where the strong anti-war message really came into play.  What I liked about it was how realistically anti-war it was, exploring when it's "okay" to kill someone, the collateral damage of all wars, genocide, etc., etc.  Heavy stuff!  The violence level is unusually high for MG in the later books, growing up with you a la Harry Potter.  But if a kid's read Harry Potter, then they can most certainly handle this.  The books are big on family and friendships, too.

Suzanne Collins has said that her inspiration for these books was Alice in Wonderland.  If you lived in New York City, you were more likely to tumble down a manhole than a rabbit hole, right?  At least, that's the idea, and if you look you can find a lot of parallels between this and Alice.  Both worlds manage to be fascinating, irrational, and terrifying all at the same time, and Gregor provides incredible characters, lots of adventure and fun, and moral dilemmas to boot.  It's a fabulous story that is everything a bedtime story should be, in my opinion!  =)

Library Loot #2, or what I've put on hold

I'm tired of making neat lists of books I want, and then not finding them in the library, or getting distracted and forgetting to pick them up.  I'm SO DONE with my own book ADD, peeps! =) So I've put in three requests for books for my dad to pick up down in the Twin Cities for me, removing me from ADD temptation, and I thought I'd share those requests with you:

Epitaph Road by David Patneaude

• Why I want to read it: Dystopia!!!  Duh!  And I love gender-relations stories.

2097 is a transformed world. Thirty years earlier, a mysterious plague wiped out 97 percent of the male population, devastating every world system from governments to sports teams, and causing both universal and unimaginable grief. In the face of such massive despair, women were forced to take over control of the planet--and in doing so they eliminated all of Earth's most pressing issues. Poverty, crime, warfare, hunger . . . all gone.
But there's a price to pay for this new "utopia," which fourteen-year-old Kellen is all too familiar with. Every day, he deals with life as part of a tiny minority that is purposefully kept subservient and small in numbers. His career choices and relationship options are severely limited and controlled. He also lives under the threat of scattered recurrences of the plague, which seem to pop up wherever small pockets of men begin to regroup and grow in numbers.
And then one day, his mother's boss, an iconic political figure, shows up at his home. Kellen overhears something he shouldn't--another outbreak seems to be headed for Afterlight, the rural community where his father and a small group of men live separately from the female-dominated society. Along with a few other suspicious events, like the mysterious disappearances of Kellen's progressive teacher and his Aunt Paige, Kellen is starting to wonder whether the plague recurrences are even accidental. No matter what the truth is, Kellen cares only about one thing--he has to save his father.

Ash by Malinda Lo

• Why I want to read it: I'm a sucker for Cinderella stories and I like the twist!

In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, re-reading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing and romantic, Ash is an empowering retelling of Cinderella about choosing life and love over solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Rapture of the Deep: Being an account of the further adventures of Jacky Faber, soldier, sailor, mermaid, spy by L.A. Meyer

• Why I want to read it: I love this series!

On the very day that Jacky Faber is to wed her true love, she is kidnapped by British Naval Intelligence and forced to embark on yet another daring mission—this time to search for sunken Spanish gold. But when Jacky is involved, things don't always go as planned. Jacky has survived battles on the high seas, the stifling propriety of a Boston finishing school, and even confinement in a dank French prison. But no adventure has quite matched her opportunistic street-urchin desires—until now.

 Do you have any library loot of your own?  Leave a comment with the link or the titles of your picks!  =)