Maggie Stiefvater on Happiness

Maggie Stiefvater is the author of LAMENT, which I loved. I cannot wait for the sequel BALLAD, which comes out this year. Plus, her new series is beginning with SHIVER. Check out her el jay and the Merry Sisters of Fate comm because this is one author you'll want to learn more about. Her blog posts are always entertaining and informative.





I like the new cover since it gels with the contents and will match the cover of BALLAD, but I loved the old one. The charcoal details shown throughout the book were lovely.



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Liviania welcomed me to do a guest blog on happiness for her in honor of her birthday and her blog's anniversary. Happy blogbirthday, Liviania! I'm going to try my best to keep it vaguely book related, so here goes nuthin'.

1.Happiness is, first and foremost, sweet tea and cookie dough. Let's be serious here.

Shoot. I broke my book-related promise with the first item on the list.

1a. Happiness is, first and foremost, sweet tea and cookie dough while reading a good book.

2. Happiness is a year of books that I am dying to read: THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH, by Carrie Ryan, THE DEMON'S LEXICON, by Sarah Rees Brennan, AS YOU WISH, by Jackson Pearce. Zombies, demons, and genies, respectively, all with love involves. So after your boyfriend is bitten by a zombie you can sell your soul to the devil in return for a genie who can grant three wishes: 1) eliminate the zombie threat, 2) give your soul back, and 3) give me the sequel.

3. Happiness is also a year of books that I've loved being made into movies that will hopefully not suck: HARRY POTTER, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, and THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. Okay, wait. TTW doesn't come out until 2010, but that's still enough fun movieness for happiness. I am currently trying to stop watching the Harry Potter trailer on repeat so that I can continue on to #3.

4. Happiness is Melina Marchetta. I have read SAVING FRANCESCA and JELLICOE ROAD in quick succession and I'm about to start in on FINNIKIN OF THE ROCK. She writes such wonderful reluctant love stories into her redemption stories. They entertain even a reader such as myself who is more often entertained by novels that involve supernatural creatures popping people's heads off.



5. Happiness is having two books coming out this year that I'm really proud of: SHIVER, on August 1 (a girl and boy fall in love; the boy must become a wolf each winter), and BALLAD, on October 1 (the sequel to LAMENT where James must choose between saving his best friend-long term crush or the faerie which is making him change the way he sees himself). SHIVER has been so exciting -- the German, Italian, and Dutch rights all sold right away based upon the first 77 pages (we didn't even have the full manuscript ready for them to look at) and BALLAD has this absolutely drop dead gorgeous cover with FIRE on it.

6. Happiness is having finally amassed a nice pile of young adult book review blogs that I regularly check for recommendations. This one, YAreads.com, Reviewer X, Guys Lit Wire, The YA Mansion amongst others. . . it's taken about a year and a half for me to find my way around the YA book world, but it's a great community. Great for procrastinating on writing.

7. And finally, happiness is finding good books in unexpected places. Like under a pile of clean laundry that you'd avoided folding for a few weeks. Why, hellloooo, John Green!

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It may have broken her rule, but I can get behind tea and cookie dough. (Though really, coffee is better than tea.)

Maggie's offering one lucky duck a signed copy of LAMENT. You wanna be the lucky one? Follow the rules.