This is the book trailer for Live Through This! The song is “Something Broken” by Shaina Rae. You can visit her website to buy her demo or check out a couple of her other songs at Reverb Nation. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNHG2UHvmyo?feature=player_embedded]
Last month, I wrote about the photo shoot we did for the book trailer for Live Through This. Now the time has come to finally share it with you![youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNHG2UHvmyo]
Song: "Somewhat Broken" by Shaina Rae | ShainaRaeMusic.com Photography and Video Editing: Shaina Rae Concept: Mindi Scott Direction: Dwayne Scott Voiceover: Laura Samsel Featuring: Anika, Bailey, Cali, Carter, Kelland, Kyle, Linda, Madeline, Marty, Sarah, Shaylee, and Taylor.
If you've read the book, you might spot that some of the details aren't perfectly perfect. But we got really close in most of the casting, which was an accomplishment in and of itself! I'm very thankful to everyone who was a part of it, and especially to Shaina who really worked hard to use her photography to bring Coley and the others to life as I'd envisioned them.
(Side note: I actually don't think I'll be able to watch this video again for a while myself; the adorable way that "Reece" looks at "Coley" in the pictures at the end truly makes my chest hurt. How did he do that? Ha ha.)
Okay, wait! There's more I want to share with you!
Blog Tour Live Through This officially comes out on October 2nd, so I have a blog tour starting today through The Teen Book Scene. (Click the link to see the full schedule.) Kari Olson, an agent-represented YA writer and book blogger, coordinated a varied and fun tour with a couple of author interviews and guest blogs by me, some questions for my characters, reviews, and a wonderful post by my editor, Liesa, about her experience editing Live Through This that will go up next Monday. I'll likely Tweet and post the links on FB each day. I hope you'll check them out!
FYI: The first stop of the tour is TODAY over at Mimosa Stimulus. Jenny did an interview with me, which included questions about tough issue books that I recommend and how my own experiences affected the writing of this book.
Reviews A few reviews of Live Through This have started popping up online. I've done a round-up of some of my favorites so far on my website. All of these are from readers who really get it (which is so gratifying for me!) and who were careful in their reviews not to give away too much and spoil the story for others. Each of them do address the major theme, but I wouldn't call that a spoiler at all; it's revealed on the very first page of the book (as well as in the letter to readers about why I wrote it).
Seattle Launch Party Just in case you missed it, the launch party for Live Through This is happening on Saturday, October 13th at 2pm. There will be music and food and desserts and other fun things happening! All the information about the event is posted here. (The official event page on FB is here.)
Signed Copies of Live Through This and Freefall And in case you missed this, even if you can't make it out for my launch party, you can still get signed and personalized copies of my books from the event on October 13th. You'll just want to try to get your order in very soon. The information for how and where to order signed copies is here.
And that's all the stuff for now!
Last month, I wrote about the photo shoot we did for the book trailer for Live Through This. Now the time has come to finally share it with you!
Song: "Somewhat Broken" by Shaina Rae | ShainaRaeMusic.com
Photography and Video Editing: Shaina Rae
Concept: Mindi Scott
Direction: Dwayne Scott
Voiceover: Laura Samsel
Featuring: Anika, Bailey, Cali, Carter, Kelland, Kyle, Linda, Madeline, Marty, Sarah, Shaylee, and Taylor.
If you've read the book, you might spot that some of the details aren't perfectly perfect. But we got really close in most of the casting, which was an accomplishment in and of itself! I'm very thankful to everyone who was a part of it, and especially to Shaina who really worked hard to use her photography to bring Coley and the others to life as I'd envisioned them.
(Side note: I actually don't think I'll be able to watch this video again for a while myself; the adorable way that "Reece" looks at "Coley" in the pictures at the end truly makes my chest hurt. How did he do that? Ha ha.)
Okay, wait! There's more I want to share with you!
Blog Tour
Live Through This officially comes out on October 2nd, so I have a blog tour starting today through The Teen Book Scene. (Click the link to see the full schedule.) Kari Olson, an agent-represented YA writer and book blogger, coordinated a varied and fun tour with a couple of author interviews and guest blogs by me, some questions for my characters, reviews, and a wonderful post by my editor, Liesa, about her experience editing Live Through This that will go up next Monday. I'll likely Tweet and post the links on FB each day. I hope you'll check them out!
FYI: The first stop of the tour is TODAY over at Mimosa Stimulus. Jenny did an interview with me, which included questions about tough issue books that I recommend and how my own experiences affected the writing of this book.
Reviews
A few reviews of Live Through This have started popping up online. I've done a round-up of some of my favorites so far on my website. All of these are from readers who really get it (which is so gratifying for me!) and who were careful in their reviews not to give away too much and spoil the story for others. Each of them do address the major theme, but I wouldn't call that a spoiler at all; it's revealed on the very first page of the book (as well as in the letter to readers about why I wrote it).
Seattle Launch Party
Just in case you missed it, the launch party for Live Through This is happening on Saturday, October 13th at 2pm. There will be music and food and desserts and other fun things happening! All the information about the event is posted here. (The official event page on FB is here.)
Signed Copies of Live Through This and Freefall
And in case you missed this, even if you can't make it out for my launch party, you can still get signed and personalized copies of my books from the event on October 13th. You'll just want to try to get your order in very soon. The information for how and where to order signed copies is here.
And that's all the stuff for now!
Two years ago minus three days, I received finished copies of Freefall and wrote up a blog post comparing the book with the ARC.
With Live Through This, I have both a hardcover and a paperback version of the book to show you, so I'm going to leave the ARC out of the discussion. (I will say, though, that I think the biggest differences this time are that the cover on the finished book is matte and the pages themselves are beige, while the ARC's cover is glossy and the pages are white.)
So here are the finished books!
The hard cover, obviously, is on the left and the paperback is on the right. They both feature the blurb from Stephanie Perkins at the top, and are close to the same height. Also, they are the same number of pages. From what I can spot, the interior pages in both versions are identical in every way, so if you're talking with your friend about the Miley Cyrus quote that you read on page 89 (for example!), it should be the same, no matter which version you have.
Things start to look a little bit different when you flip over to the back:
With the hardcover, we have the blurbs from Mandy Hubbard/Amanda Grace and Jo Knowles in much larger print than the paperback, since they take up the majority of the content. The back of the paperback is busier: small blurbs up top, the (condensed) book summary, as well as lots of tiny print about the design and such at the bottom. With the hardcover, the summary and all the tiny print appears inside on the jacket flaps, of course.
There are actually a few slight differences in the book summary from hardcover to paperback. The paperback is more concise. Neither of these summaries match what's on my website or Goodreads. Amazon and other booksellers happen to be using the catalog summary, which isn't like any of the summaries that you can find elsewhere. (I think I'll probably go ahead and edit my website and Goodreads to match the hardcover's summary now that it's for sure final.) Also, the tagline appears on neither version! Live Through This doesn't appear to have a tagline.
Here's a look at the back flap of the hard cover sitting beside the last page of the paperback:
My picture didn't get used anywhere appear with Freefall, so this is kind of cool. The picture that appears in the books is the same one that appears at the top of my blog.
Here are both styles of Live Through This on the shelf beside Freefall:
As you can see, Freefall is their shorter (but still sexy) little brother. (And, yes, I adore Courtney Summers and her books. ♥)
The only thing I would have liked to see different on the Live Through This spine is my first name, like Freefall has. I like Elizabeth Scott, Kieran Scott, and Michael Scott very much, but I'd prefer to see Mindi Scott's books in the right place on a store shelf rather than potentially mixed in with the books of another YA-writing Scott, you know? Oh, well.
That's all the stuff that I can think of to tell you! I'm super excited that the finished copies are ready and will soon be available for YOU. I'm also really glad that Live Through This has format options for readers. Me? I'm actually a paperback-loving girl, so the hardcover will mostly be chilling on the shelf looking cool while the paperback and I go off and have the time of our fricken lives together. :-)
Friday, September 7, 2012, started out as a strange day for me. My commuter bus jacknifed and had to be evacuated, and then my replacement bus (filled with two buses worth of passengers) had to pull over for several minutes to be serviced. Even with all of this nonsense, I was only twenty minutes late for work. What an adventure!
Liesa said, "We got your Kirkus review. And it's a starred review!"
And then we made excited "Yay!"s and such at each other. She read me parts of the review and we chatted about how wonderful it was that the reviewer totally got what we were trying to do with this book. Liesa let me know she was forwarding the review to me and congratulated me repeatedly before we got off the phone.
I called my husband and my mom to let them know about the star. I tried to explain what it meant, but I honestly didn't entirely know. (I do have a slightly better idea now, having learned that Kirkus touts themselves as "The World's Toughest Book Critics" and that the Kirkus star is "awarded to books of remarkable merit.")
After the phone calls, the emails started coming. And the texts and the tweets. People who work for my publisher. People at my agent's office. Other writers and readers and friends. It was so exciting and overwhelming that I had to go into the bathroom to cry a couple of times.
The best part for me was thinking about the reactions that everyone told me about. Like Liesa and Alyson at Simon & Schuster hugging and jumping up and down right before Liesa called me. And Jim and Lauren at Dystel & Goderich reading the review on Jim's phone, and trying and failing at a high-five. And everyone at Pulse getting an email that announced the review.
All of these people in New York--some of whom I've met and many of whom I haven't--were all excited and happy for me. But it wasn't just for me. I wrote the book, but I am not the only person who made it what it is, who has a stake in it, who wants good things for it.
We did this. We made this book together. And someone likes it! How cool is that?
★ "What makes this more than another 'problem' novel is the author's steadfast refusal to deal in stereotypes and easy answers. [ . . . ] Required reading for anyone who's ever wondered 'why didn't they just tell someone?'" ~ Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
You can read the full Kirkus review here.
