Blogiversary Book Giveaway!

This giveaway is now closed - Congratulations go to Maggie on your win!


Are you still breathing after the two interviews I was lucky enough to be able to share today? Well hold onto your hats because I've now got books to add into the mix!

Up for grabs are two recent releases:

'Alice in Zombieland' by Gena Showalter
She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.
Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.
Her father was right. The monsters are real….
To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

'The Feathered Man' by Jeremy de Quidt
In a German town, long ago, lives a tooth-puller's boy called Klaus. It isn't Klaus's fault that he sees his master steal a diamond from the mouth of a dead man in Frau Drecht's lodging house, or that Frau Drecht and her murderous son want it for themselves.
He has nothing to do with the Jesuit priest and his Aztec companion who turn up out of the blue looking for it, or the Professor of Anatomy who takes such a strange interest in it. No, Klaus doesn't want any trouble.
But when he finds himself with the diamond in his pocket, things really can't get much worse - that is, until the feathered man appears. Then they become a matter of life . . . and death

(Please note that this is a proof copy)

To give more people the opportunity to win, there will be a winner for each book, so when you enter please specify if you do not mind which book you'd like, or if there is one in particular you would like to be entered to win.

And to enter, all you need to do is be a follower of this blog and leave a comment. If you could leave contact info of either a twitter name or an email so I can contact you if you win that's greatly appreciated!

This is open internationally and is open until midnight Friday 30th November GMT.

Good luck, and get entering!

Author Q & A with Katherine Marsh

Continuing in the spirit of celebration for today’s blogiversary, I am now lucky enough to be joined by the lovely Katherine Marsh, author of  ‘The Night Tourist’ and ‘The Twilight Prisoner’ who has just released her latest novel ‘Jepp, Who Defied the Stars’ – a hauntingly beautiful tale with an extraordinary hero at its heart.

“For those readers who haven’t yet discovered Jepp, who defied the Stars, how would you describe the book to them and tempt them to pick up a copy?”

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars is the story of a teenager at the end of the 16th century who leaves his small town home to become a court dwarf, rebels against the world he finds there, and ends up a captive of a revolutionary and eccentric astronomer. It’s a tale about fate and free will, specifically the question of whether our parents, circumstances and misfortunes define us, or whether we can shape our own destinies. The characters are based on real historical figures, including the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and the dwarf who served him. I think anyone who's ever felt like an outsider or underestimated by the world will enjoy this book--as well as anyone looking for a page-turning historical adventure. 

“Can you tell us a bit about your process – how the ideas come to you, and how you develop them?” 

My background is as a journalist and one of the hints I used to share with reporters was to pay special attention to moments that bother you. The same is true for fiction. I think great books come out of questions, confusion, things that rattle and plague you. In the case of Jepp, I knew I wanted to write a novel about fate and free will because of my own conflicting feelings on this subject. When I was growing up my mother was a very serious astrologer and, to this day, I find comfort in the idea of predetermination. But, at the same time, I am constantly both exhilarated and terrified by a gut feeling that life is uncertain and unknowable.

When I decided I wanted to write about this topic, I began to read about the history of astrology and became fascinated by the time in which astronomers were also astrologers but a new sense of science and free will were emerging. This led me to the astronomer/ astrologer Tycho Brahe. He was such an eccentric character--with a futuristic castle with running water, a collection of automata or moving statues and even a beer-drinking pet moose--that I immediately wanted to write about him. When I read that a dwarf named Jepp sat at his feet I thought of the wonderful portraits of court dwarfs by the 17th century Spanish artist Diego Velazquez and the story of a teenage court dwarf trying to control his own destiny came into focus.

“What was the most exciting part for you?” 

The most exciting part for me was putting Jepp into tough situations and watching him work his way through them. Once you establish a strong character and voice for that character, they begin to take you on a journey. I also loved shaping the language in Jepp, trying to make the prose as distinctive, memorable, and beautiful as I could.

“And what was the most challenging?” 

The most challenging part of the process is honestly putting Jepp out into the marketplace. We live in a time in which books are expected to be reducible to Hollywood-style sound bites and in which familiarity is considered a virtue. I did not write Jepp with those kind of commercial considerations in mind. Rather, the book is an act of faith that there are plenty of readers out there who value complexity, originality and ambition.

“What has been your favourite part of the writing and publishing process?”

On a good day, the writing part of the process is my favorite. On a bad day, I take solace in having written although when I look at my published books, I'm always afraid I won't be able to do it again.

"What are the most important attributes to helping you stay sane as a writer?"

I don't think anyone who aspires to become a writer should place a high value on sanity. Doubt, failure and madness can be just as instructive.

“Has writing always been something you wanted to do? And how did you make the jump from wanting to write and writing for yourself to becoming a full time writer?”

I've wanted to write pretty much as long as I can remember. It's the way I process the world. I started my career as a narrative journalist, which is a wonderful way to learn how to observe the world and structure a story. But ultimately, I wanted the freedom to create worlds, as opposed to just describing the one around me. In my late 20s, I wrote one children's book that ended up in a drawer but it gave me the confidence to attempt another. This second one found an agent and eventually a publisher. It's called The Night Tourist and was published in translation in ten countries and won a big US mystery writing award. I wish I could say that it's been easy since then but I still struggle with doubt and the fear that I'm not really a "writer." So I hope no one else let's that stop them.

“Do you have a specific routine or writing process, and does anything in particular stimulate your writing?”

I work for about 4-6 hours a day, starting at 8am, when my mind is fresh. Some days I write nothing at all, other days several pages. There are occasional moments of inspiration interspersed with lots of revision made to look like inspiration. I am always stimulated to write by reading other books, especially ones that give me a new sense of what is possible.

“Do you have some favourite books or authors that have inspired you?” 

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is one of my all-time favorites. I love how expansive the story is, integrating religious history, Soviet oppression, philosophy, magic realism, romance. I like books that defy genre and that appeal to our interlinked sense of mortality and wonder.

“What are you working on at the moment?”

A story based on a Russian fairy tale.

If you’d like to find out more about Katherine, you can follow her on twitter @MarshKatherine

You can also follow the lovely UK publishers of Jepp, Hot Key Books here!

You can also find her facebook page here, and don’t forget to check her website for more information and news!

Author Q & A with Eowyn Ivey

Welcome to The Review Diaries two year blogiversary!
I’m kind of amazed that we’ve hit this mark, but it’s here and it’s going to be even bigger than last years!

So for your pleasure today I have an interview with the lovely Katherine Marsh, author of ‘Jepp, who Defied the Stars’ and a giveaway of a proof of the book.
Later on I will have a giveaway featuring new exciting books from Random House and Mira Ink – so check back this afternoon for more details on that!

Up first is Eowyn Ivey, whose breath taking debut novel ‘The Snow Child’ has swept everyone away. So please join me in wishing her a huge welcome to The Review Diaries!

“The Snow Child was a hauntingly beautiful book, and I loved how you wove elements of fantasy with reality, are you tempted to explore other fairy tales in your writing now?”

Thank you so much! That really was the key for me with The Snow Child. Until I stumbled on the Russian fairy tale that inspired the novel, my fiction was lacking something, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Now I know -- it's the fantastical. Now that I've finally figured it out, I'm enjoying exploring it further as a fiction writer. I'm once again working on a piece inspired by folklore and myth and set in Alaska.

“Has the reaction to the book surprised you in any way?”

I always joke that it would have been delusional of me to expect any of this to happen. As a bookseller, I felt I had fairly reasonable expectations about the publishing process. I knew I would be incredibly fortunate to find a US publisher, and I hoped that a few readers would stumble upon my story and enjoy it. The reception instead has completely staggered me.

“What has been your favourite part of the writing and publishing process?”

They are two such different parts of the work -- writing versus being published. I knew I loved to write well before my novel was published, but once The Snow Child was released into the world, I discovered the joy of hearing from readers. The emails I get are touching and amazing. I'm often surprised by the insights readers have into the story. And I love how they bring their own experiences and emotions to the page. That has been one of the most rewarding, and unexpected, aspects of the process.

“Has writing always been something you wanted to do? And how did you make the jump from wanting to write and writing for yourself to becoming a full time writer?”

I've known since I was a teenager that I wanted to earn a living working with the written word, and I've steadily kept my aim there. I just wasn't sure what form it would take. I started out as an creative writing major in college, but then switched to journalism and ended up working for nearly 10 years as a newspaper reporter. Then I went to work at Fireside Books and began spending my writing time on fiction, because I knew that is what I love to read and write.

“Do you have a specific routine or writing process, and does anything in particular stimulate your writing?”

Like a lot of writers, I really do better when I have a set schedule. When I wrote The Snow Child, my husband helped me get an hour or two each night to write after our daughters went to bed. Strangely, I now have more time to write but find it hard to get in the groove. The publication of The Snow Child has become a pleasant but huge distraction, and I'm now trying to find my way back into my next novel.

“Will you be doing any tours or signings in the US or the UK in the future?”

The paperback was just released Nov. 6 here in the United States, so I'm doing some events here in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. And I will be returning to the UK for some events the first week of December, but we're still in the planning stages. I'll try to post a schedule on my blog, Letters from Alaska, once it's set.

A huge thank you to Eowyn for taking the time out to talk to us!
If you’d like to find out more, you can find it on Eowyn’s website – and you can also find her on twitter here!

And if you haven’t yet read ‘The Snow Child’ how on earth have you missed it? Go pick up a copy now! It will be one of the most hauntingly beautiful books you’ll read this year!

Check back on the site later – the next post will be going live mid-afternoon and will include a fantastic giveaway for you!

Two Year Blogiversary!

At just past midnight over here in the UK it is now officially the two year blogiversary of The Review Diaries!

I can't quite believe I've made it this far, but as I have I have lots of surprises in store throughout the day for you fabulous readers who have inspired me to keep reviewing for the last two years.

Later in the day there will be guest posts from the likes of Eowyn Ivey author of 'The Snow Child' and lots of book giveaways for all!

So check back later and help me celebrate!