We are only one week away from the release of Leviathan. But the big news at Casa Larbfeld today is the release of Justine’s new novel Liar!
As you might guess, Liar is about a girl who doesn’t always tell the truth—not even to the reader. It’s one of those books in which the whole story (indeed, the whole world) gets flipped upside down in your hands every few chapters or so.
Of course, it would seem uxorious and self-serving to heap praise upon my wife’s novel, so instead I will direct you to its three starred reviews:
“Dark, gripping . . . an engrossing story of teenage life on the margins.â€
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Readers will get chills paging through Larbalestier’s suspenseful novel . . . with a masterfully constructed unreliable narrator [they] will be guessing and theorizing long after they’ve finished this gripping story.â€
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The chilling story . . . will have readers’ hearts racing. In the end readers will delve into the psyche of a troubled teen and decide for themselves the truths and lies.â€
—School Library Journal (starred review)
Want to know more? Click here for more reviews, here to read an excerpt, and here for more info from the author.
Also out today is the paperback edition of Justine’s previous book, How to Ditch Your Fairy, with this amazing new cover:
Hammers! We loves them!
Note that Liar is a slightly older book than How to Ditch Your Fairy. It’s officially for 14-up.
In addition, you may wish to note that Leviathan has also received three starred reviews. So, like, nyeh.
The Good News: Actual copies of Leviathan exist in the real world.
The Bad News: They are sealed in cardboard boxes in the impregnable basements of your friendly local bookstore, armed with thermite bombs that will explode if they are opened prior to October 6. These boxes look like this:
If you see one, do not touch it before Tuesday, October 6.
In other news, it turns out that my steampunk “panel” at the New York Anime Festival is just me. So I can rock out, showing images from Leviathan and gabbing to my heart’s content.
By the way, the Festival looks really cool. Lots of costume events and generally awesome. Click here to check out the general lay of the land. And here for the amazing list of guests, which include Gro-Wings, an amazing looking steampunk fashion house.
Anyway, I hope some of you are coming. See you Sunday.
Leviathan: A Steampunk Panel
Sunday, September 27
1:30 PM – 2:30PM
Javits Center
655 West 34th Street
Simon & Schuster’s annual BlogFest is happening right now! BlogFest is a huge group blogging project in which the same questions are answered by me and 39 other S&S authors. (Click here for the full list). Today’s question is, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”
Not every author answers every question, but there are usually three or more of us for each one. It’s been cool to see different writers respond to the same stimulus.
Click here daily for the Blogfest homepage.
Now, continuing with my recent (and no doubt short-lived) tradition of Walker Wednesday, behold today’s walker, the Italian, flame-breathing, two-legged motorcycle known as Lrry.
I didn’t run into Lrry until Leviathan was complete, so it didn’t occur to me to include any two-legged motorcycles. The closest thing to Lrry in my world is the four-legged horse walkers revealed here in last week’s Walker Wednesday.
Anyway, I like that Lrry breathes flame. More things should breathe flame. And its walking motion has something uncanny about it. That’s a cool thing about walkers, they set off a weird reaction in my head. I’m used to animals walking and vehicles having wheels, and when those two things get mixed up, it rewires my brain just a little.
I mean, seeing a cat with wheels would be pretty freaky too, right?
But why is this thing called Lrry?
Here’s a (rather long) movie showing Lrry in motion:
Here at last is the info on my big Leviathan tour. But first the bad news: I’m probably not coming to your home town.
Why not? Well, I can’t go everywhere. In fact, I can only go to a tiny sliver of this gigantic country, even in five weeks of hard touring. So most of you will be disappointed. I AM SORRY ABOUT THIS. (As for other countries: There are plans for the UK, France, and Australia. But no details yet.)
Luckily for me, I cannot be blamed! This schedule was created by the giant S&S computer known only as TourTron, and I have no power over TourTron. No one does.
Here’s the good news, though, for those of you who live within the tiny sliver. I’ll have a couple of special guests on many of my events. One of them you know quite well: Robin Wasserman, author of Skinned and Crashed. You may remember her from this IMterview, and her week of guest blogging here.
My other guest will be Sarah Reese Brennan, author of Demon’s Lexicon, which I liked enough to give a big fat blurb to. She’s a wonderful writer of fan fic as well as YA, and has a hilarious blog. I’ll be IMterviewing her here soon.
Each event says who will be there—me and Sarah, me and Robin, or me alone.
And now for the schedule!
Can’t wait to see you guys!
I’ll be posting the schedule for my continent-spanning Leviathan Tour on Sunday, but I thought I’d stick this bit of news here in the meantime: I’m appearing at Teen Central here in NYC next Tuesday!
For the first time ever in the US, I’ll be showing unseen images from Leviathan on a big screen and talking about the series. The books aren’t for sale yet, but I’m happy to sign whatever you bring.
When
Tuesday, September 22
5:00PM
Where
The Grand Central Branch of the New York Public Library, on 46th, just east of Lexington. (Click here for directions and more.)
Second Floor Community Room.
This event is free, of course, but if you’re in the mood to support the NYPL, just click here.
Update! NEW DATE!
I’ll also be on a Steam-Punk Panel at the New York Anime Festival.
Sunday, September 27
1:30 PM – 2:30PM
Javits Center
655 West 34th Street
Not sure what room, and you have to have a festival pass to come in. Click here for details about all that.
Welcome to Walker Wednesday, your weekly source of video about real-life walking machines!
This is, of course, Leviathan-related. One of the main characters in the series gets around in a Cyklop Stormwalker, which I first revealed two posts ago.
But that’s not the only walker in the series. Keith Thompson also created these German horse scouts, which were revealed on io9.com a week ago. (Click here to read that post.)
They look like this:
Anyway, here’s our real-life walker for the week: Plustech’s Timberjack, designed for cutting down trees. (We authors are all about cutting down trees, you know. Think about it.)
Pretty cool, huh?
One thing you’ll notice about real-life walkers is that they walk slowly. Animals are still much quicker than machines when it comes to moving on legs. In fact, animals are generally better than machines at everything, except under very specific circumstances. You might think that cars are faster than horses, but only if you create a very flat surface (aka, a road) for them to use. On almost any naturally occurring surface, horses win.
But I best not say more, as two of my characters have this exact same discussion in Leviathan.
Speaking of walkers, you can buy a fine art print of the old cover of Leviathan direct from Keith. A lot of the book’s interior art will be available after it publishes on October 6, but this piece is ready right now. Click here to take a look.
Thanks to everyone who came to the NYPL reading last week. It was totally awesome and packed, which is how we authors like it. For those of you who weren’t there, I read a bit of Chapter 2 of Leviathan, the part that goes with the image I posted last week.
And now a message from our sponsor, Swarovski Crystal.
Tally took a steadying breath, the room spinning again, but in a good way. She gestured for the windows to transpare a little more, and in the sunlight she saw the new additions.
“Ooh, pretty-making.â€
Bolder than all the other implanted glitter, twelve tiny rubies ringed each of Shay’s pupils, glowing softly red against emerald irises.
“Bubbly, huh?â€
No, I didn’t photoshop that, and it’s not a prank. It’s the second-place winner of a competition co-organized by designboom and Swarovski Diamonds, by Anthony Mallier. It’s kind of amazing how close this design is to Shay’s eye surge.
Not that I’m complaining. I doubt I’m the first to come up with this idea, given how long people have been saying, “you’ve got a sparkle in your eye.” It’s only a matter of time before diamond-laced contacts are real, and not just a prototype. Read more here in Mami Magazine.
Of course, there’s no time-telling feature with these, so Shay still wins!
Thanks to Twitter-pal @13stars_above for spotting it.
In other news, the Leviathan trailer has almost 60,000 views on YouTube! Thanks to everyone who watched it, and told your friends about it. (Clearly, some of you did.)
Sorry I haven’t been posting much, but there is a book to write—Behemoth, sequel to Leviathan! That’s right, I have to finish Book 2 before I go on tour for Book 1 at the beginning of October. Speaking of which, I’ll be posting the tour info soon, once I get a few details sorted.
Watch this space for details!
Update:
Click here to read the Romantic Times’ blog entry about the reading last week. Complete with this picture of me, Lauren McLaughlin, E. Lockhart, and Bennet Madison.
What with all the trailer hoopla, I forgot to post a new illustration at the beginning of the month! So it’s time for more Leviathan art!
You may have notices that the first three images were all from the Darwinist side of things. (That is, weird beasties.) This was an oversight on my part, because the Clanker side of the war (weird machines) is equally cool.
So I give you . . . the Cyklop Stormwalker!
One of the main reasons I chose Keith Thompson is his equal facility with strange creatures and fantastical machines. That’s the whole point of the series, after all, to see two distinct technologies (or ideologies, or aesthetics, or world views) at war with each other—one biological, the other mechanical. So to make the contest fair, neither one can look better than the other. I think you’ll agree, both are slathered with awesome sauce.
Again, this is only one of fifty pieces of interior art. Two percent!
Click here to see the other three images I’ve revealed.
And if none of this made sense to you, click here to see the Leviathan trailer, WICKED BIG-STYLE.
Update: Forgot to mention that Justine and I will be appearing at Teen Author Reading Night in NYC this Wednesday!
September 9, 6:00-7:30PM
Jefferson Market Branch of NYPL
425 6th Ave, at 10th St.
Gordon Korman, Pop
Justine Larbalestier, Liar
David Levithan, Love is the Higher Law
E. Lockhart, The Treasure Map of Boys
Lauren McLaughlin, Recycler
Bennett Madison, The Blonde of the Joke
Dan Poblocki, The Stone Child
Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan
This official Leviathan trailer is pretty amazing. It’s made entirely out of Keith Thompson’s art from the series, and has been rocking my world.
I’m glad I can finally share it with you.
Enjoy:
Thanks to everyone at Motherland and Simon & Schuster who made this possible. (Click here to see more of Motherland ‘s work.)
Here’s the YouTube link, if you want to embed it in your own blog or see it WICKED BIG.
For more videos about Leviathan, click here.
Leviathan comes out October 6. Spread the word!
A Gentle Reminder: The Uglies e-book is still free, but only till September 4. Click here to go to Simon & Schuster’s download site.
Update: Forgot to mention: Leviathan comes out October 13 in Australia, roughly on October 6 in the UK, and in a year or so from now in Germany and France. The series has also sold in Holland and Turkey, but I don’t know the pub plans there.
Before I sink completely into Leviathan-mania, I want to point out that it’s now possible to buy my New York trilogy in their shiny new packages. The covers were designed by Rodrigo Corral, who designed the Uglies series, and they are beautiful.
Check them out:
I really like the urban poetry of these covers, and the odd palettes as well. Each one has its own interesting mix of colors. The other cool thing is that the new books are a sweet small size, 7″ x 5″ (17.8cm x 12.7cm), and thus are very cute little paperbacks.
I’m not sure if you can order these online yet, because it’s hard to make sure what you’ll cover you get on the internets. So the best bet is a bricks-and-mortar bookstore if you want. (You can use Indie Bound to find the nearest independent.)
If you want to check out more of Rodrigo Corral’s work, just click here.
As you can see, my website has had its first makeover in many years. This is to celebrate the fact that my first new series in years, Leviathan, comes out this autumn. (October 6, to be exact.)
Things may be wonky for a while as we play around under the hood. But I hope you enjoy the new look. Let me know what you think!
Click here to contact Scott Westerfeld.
Jill Grinberg
Jill Grinberg Literary Management
info@grinbergliterary.com
