Today is the official release day of Matchbox Girls by Chrysoula Tzavelas! You can now pick up your copy in digital or trade paperback with digital in our store!

Plus, the blog tour continues with an interview of Absolven by Branwyn, on the fabulous The Discriminating Fangirl blog! Make sure to stop by and comment there, then enter the drawing on our central blog tour page for more chances at the mega prize pack!

And while you’re at it, check out these great reviews of the novel – one blogger already has an eye on Matchbox Girls for one of the best books of 2012!

A Book Vacation

Stories of My Life

Don’t forget to check back in on the main itinerary page to enter the Mega Prize Pack Giveaway for this stop on the tour!

The Matchbox Girls blog tour kicks off today, with a “Character Backstage” interview at the amazing Bibliognome blog, home of the Sentence Sneak Peek!

Check the interview out here!

Don’t forget to comment at Bibliognome and then let us know so you can be entered in our Matchbox Girls Prize Pack Giveaway!

Like what you see? There’s still time to pre-order the book and get in on some exclusive extra goodies!

And tune in tomorrow for a stop at Fantasy Nibbles!


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…what?

Yeah, it’s a lot more of the latter and less of the former, at least at a small publishing house. I spent about four hours last night wrapping, packing, and shipping various orders. And that’s not counting the time I’ll spend in line at the post office today – most of the boxes are pre-paid, but there’s a few packages that have to get sent internationally, and that involves waiting in line. While shuffling along a six-foot stack of boxes. Yeah. Fun times!

And since a picture of a giant stack of boxes (for reference, the higher of the two stacks is about 3.5 feet tall) isn’t all that exciting – much like my life – I figured I’d also snap a few pictures of the sort of things going in those boxes. Exclusive, handbound copies of Pilgrim of the Sky, in all their velvet-damask glory…

(and if you think the packing and shipping took a long time, you do not want to know how long those handbound editions took to make…)

Call for submissions here.

We’re gearing up for the release of Matchbox Girls by Chrysoula Tzavelas on February 21, and to get everyone excited, we’re sending Chrysoula out on a blog tour!

From Feb. 15 through Feb. 28, Chrysoula will be stopping by several different spots around the web to talk about the book. Better still, the characters of Matchbox Girls will be making some appearances! This is a great opportunity to get to know the characters a little better, and to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what makes them – and the book – tick.

Here’s the lineup so far:

2/15: Bibliognome

2/16: Fantasy Nibbles

2/20: Rowan Cota on G+

2/21 (release day!): The Discriminating Fangirl

2/22: Adventures of 2.0

2/23: Hopeless Bibliophile

2/27: Here at the C&G blog!

2/28: Books Make Me Happy

3/01: Jo the Booky

We may have more stops coming up – we’ll keep you posted!

Now, as an incentive to check out all of this great blog tour, there’s going to be a few digital giveaways by various blogs along the way. Plus, if you pop in at each stop and comment there, you can get additional entries in our own giveaway, for a great big Matchbox Girls prize package, which will include a paperback copy of the book and lots of other goodies! Use the widget below to enter – and you can earn extra entries by following the tour, tweeting about the giveaway, liking us on Facebook, and more! Just come back each day with a link to your comments on the blog tour and you’ll get your extra entries.

Good luck, and enjoy!

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“Filled with hairpin plot turns, breathtaking escapes, compelling characters, and a profound sense of humanity, this installment of the Extrahuman series expands upon an already fascinating universe and leaves the reader hungry for a third book.”

Full review here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-936460-18-2

The review is also this week’s featured fiction review on the PW site! Way to go, Susan!

In other kudos, the results from the Preditors & Editors Readers’ Choice polls are in!

Natania Barron’s Pilgrim of the Sky tied for 17th place in Fantasy/Science Fiction

Isabel Kunkle’s Hickey of the Beast came in 8th in Young Adult

The (re)Visions: Alice anthology also came in 8th, in the Anthology category

Brigid Ashwood‘s jaw-dropping cover for Pilgrim of the Sky was 4th in Cover Art

And Candlemark & Gleam itself came in 10th for Best Publisher!

Thank you all so much for voting for us – your support means the world! Now to see if we can make a showing at the Hugos!

It’s…edifying…to say the least. Some of the same mistakes come up again and again, and I thought it might be a good idea to address the biggies here.

1. This should really go without saying, but please spell-check your query. Misspelling the name of your own novel in your pitch is Not Good.

2. Make sure you send the requested file format. We request RTF for a reason, and sending something we have to convert into RTF before reading means you’ve automatically been bumped to the bottom of the pile.

3. Keep it short and sweet. Let your writing speak for itself, outside of a brief introduction.

Let’s take that last one and expand a bit, shall we? Candlemark & Gleam requests only a brief intro letter and synopsis, plus your first 50 pages, the latter in RTF format. The key here, kids, is brief. You don’t need to send a 20pp outline of your novel; you don’t need to spend 5pp introducing yourself to us.

In fact, your query should be short, punchy, and simple. If you can’t explain your novel in 90 seconds or less, you might want to think harder about why. Is it too complicated? Have you thrown every plot point and character in existence at the wall to see what sticks? If you can’t make sense of your own plot and distill it down, an editor certainly won’t hop on board.

Check out this great explanation of how to write a 90-second pitch – which ends up being about half a page – a lovely query length.

It’s wonderful that you have ideas about cover design, how to market the book, how you’ll support it in the marketplace – but these are part of a book proposal, not a query, and are probably better reserved for after an agent/editor/publishers requests your full. When we’re first introduced to you and your work, cold, all we really care about is the quality of that work. You know, whether you have a good, engaging plot, dynamic characters, and a writing style that conveys both to the fullest.

The other stuff – marketing, connections, all that – is just gravy. We’ll worry about that later. The story and writing are what counts, and are what will sell or not sell your book. Express the gist of the story, give us a good hook into wanting to open that sample submission, and then get out of your writing’s way.

I think the thing that interested me most, though, was not the discussion of how influential the book – and Meg – were on science fiction, or on female writers. The interesting part, instead, was some of the commentary made throughout about how girls and women simply don’t read sci-fi. They cited statistics to “prove” that women don’t read sci-fi, and said that the current apocalyptic-book and dystopia trend, and even paranormal romance, are dumbed-down, fluffy, chick-appropriate versions of science fiction.

What is it then that makes girls averse to science fiction? Could it be the pronounced boyness of the covers — the same signal that deters girls from switching to Superman after their Betty and Veronica days have passed? Science-fiction books, whether technologically elaborate, intergalactic stories by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Hal Clement or the so-called “soft” science fiction of Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick, often wear dark washes of black and navy blue with 3-D fonts and brutal images of fire and destruction.

Hmmm. Could it, perhaps, be that we’re still asking this question? That we’re coding books as “masculine” or “feminine” and therefore somehow inappropriate for the other gender to be reading? What makes a navy blue book “male,” anyway? I’m wearing navy today – does that mean I’m actually male?

Asking “Why don’t girls read sci-fi?” seems, to me, to be telling girls that there’s something weird about reading sci-fi, and that it’s not quite appropriate for them. Still. To this day.

I’m not a fan of this idea.

Isn’t there another way to talk about it? Another way to look at the situation? Can we say, instead, “Perhaps it’s because girls don’t see themselves in the stories as much” – because so many sci-fi protagonists – so many fantasy protagonists, for that matter – are male? Girls are there to be the helpmeet or the mother, not to be the hero. That is a huge reason I loved A Wrinkle in Time – Meg had agency. She was there, and present, and active, and badass. I think that’s a large reason why paranormal romance and all these YA romantic dystopias and whatnot have become popular – they put the girl front and center, even if she’s still largely characterized and/or identified by her relationships with men.

You know, this is why I love Broken, and Fly Into Fire, and Pilgrim of the Sky, and Matchbox Girls, Erekos, Hickey of the Beast…so many of our books show women being women. Being themselves. Being spunky and badass and loving and hesitant and fearless and trepidated, all at the same time. They’re there, and they’re human, and you can relate to them whether you’re male or female, a sci-fi fan or a fantasy buff.

We need more of this. And I’m proud to be able to help bring more of it to the world.

On Tuesday, Anne read from the manuscript at an event in Brooklyn – and managed to get video to share with the rest of us!

Personally, the voices are my favourite part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q971ss2QsMg&feature=youtu.be

There’s also a great interview with Anne here.

Intrigued? You should be! Green Light Delivery comes out in June 2012.