Permanent Record is officially out! Eight years have passed since my last book was published, so this publication day is a hard-won victory for me. Please see this post from last fall for a review of my strange journey.

In the meantime, I am celebrating today by doing what I love best: reading (a book by someone else). First, my copyediting assignments, then to my kids, then later to myself. After all, it’s a snow day here in the Chicago area. There’s a bottle of a good Shiraz somewhere in this house, which I will locate at the appropriate time, which hopefully will not be before 5 p.m.

My blog tour starts today as well, and my first stop is at author Christina Farley’s blog, where she conducted a Q&A with me just a few days ago. I hope Christina will visit me here on my website when her book, GILDED, is out.

You know I couldn’t sign off without providing the Amazon link to my book. Can anyone sign off anywhere without providing the Amazon link to their book?

Happy Book Birthday to Permanent Record!

I try to help or give advice to writers who contact me, seeking help. Why? Because once a writer did that for me, and it impacted my professional and personal life in a very meaningful way. Thank you, Julianna Baggott.

Beautiful. Sad. Amazing. Real. This video is why I wrote a novel about bullying.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Permanent Record

by Leslie Stella

Giveaway ends February 28, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I’m giving away 8 signed ARCs in February through Goodreads. To enter, click the link above.

My book’s release date is less than 3 weeks from now. Trying not to stress out and cry about it. I’m a negative thinker. I can only see what is going wrong. As a Sicilian-American, I am entitled to bursts of disproportionate rage and emotional breakdowns. But as a human being, a mother, a writer who is trying to forge ahead instead wallow, I need to get my shit together.

So much that is beyond my control is involved with launching a book. I admit I don’t like doing all the relentless self-promotion that seems to be required. Twitter is especially infuriating. I don’t want to read Tweets consisting of random sentences from strangers’ books or constant links to 5-star reviews from Amazon readers, so I don’t Tweet that stuff myself either. I don’t want to bother Goodreads members about my book every ten minutes, so I don’t say anything except to announce the giveaways. I hate sending out these emails to bloggers, begging for scraps of time to read and review my book or to do a Q&A with me. I just hate it. I guess I don’t mind writing blog entries like this one about my fragile emotional state, though.

I just want to write and read and be reclusive; is that so much to ask for?

Here’s a link to the One Question interview I did for Readergirlz with my fellow Amazon Children’s author, Stephanie Guerra. Even I can scrap together enough time to answer one question.

Win a signed ARC of Permanent Record, which releases March 5, a month from today. All you have to do is reveal your most humiliating high school memory. Check my Facebook page for details.

The ALA Midwinter Conference is over, and it’s good to be home. Chicago weather is inviting as always (#not true #freezing rain), and O’Hare is easy to navigate (#nope #rabbit warren of concentric circles and dead ends).

The first trade review of Permanent Record is in. Kirkus called it “an edgy, discomfiting attack on post-9/11 nerves and prejudices.”

I had a fantastic time in Seattle with my fellow authors and the publishing team at Amazon Children’s. I killed my feet in a pair of shoes laughably too small, ate great food, drank strange drinks, stared at mountains from my hotel window. (Disclosure: I had never seen mountains in person before. I couldn’t stop looking at them.) I also got to inscribe a copy of my book to Caroline Kennedy, who came up to our booth during my signing. I was calm and cool, but inside I was a mess. (Revelation: I am usually a mess on the inside in my everyday life.)

I have a nice big box of ARCs here, and I am putting together a contest to give some away. (Disclaimer: it might be a humiliating contest.) Stay tuned!

Is it wrong that one of the things I am looking forward to on my trip to Seattle this week for ALA Midwinter Conference is what kind of food I am going to eat? Is four days of pastries excessive? Is there anything strange about being excited to meet my publisher at a doughnut event?

Upcoming highlights:

• My schedule lists several cocktail parties and Happy Hours with the appellation “bar to be determined.”
• Sitting in at the Best Fiction for Young Adults Committee on Saturday afternoon, to be followed by a Happy Hour with people from the Young Adult Library Services Association, to be followed by “a bar rendezvous at an undisclosed location.”
• A meeting with YA bloggers (This does not take place at a bar but at a cafe; so no liquor, but yes pastries. Obviously it’s still a win.)
• A dinner party, to which I do not know what to wear, and for which my publisher—in a moment of eerie premonition—expressly instructed me “don’t ask me what to wear.”
• A cocktail party with my fellow authors and publishing team at Amazon Children’s followed by more cocktails at a mystery bar.

In case it isn’t apparent, I am really excited about this conference! My job is to make librarians fall in love with my book, and like any besotted chump at a bar, I am going to use all this alcohol to my advantage.

It took a while, but we’re here. I think the designer, Katrina Damkoehler, did a fantastic job. Publishers don’t have to get the author’s approval (usually; unless you’re the kind of successful megalomaniac that I can only dream of becoming), but it’s nice when they ask for your input. And, Lordy, I inputted. I think this is the third major overhaul of the original design. It’s hard, you know…as the author, you have in your mind a theme you want to convey by the imagery, and your editor or publisher has another idea, and the designer yet another. So many things have to be taken into consideration. For us, we wanted an edgy image that was appealing to both boys and girls, and that alone is a tough job. The protagonist, Bud, is a boy—so it’s a “boy book,” right? Well, yes, but not so fast: girls are the predominant readership for YA books; it’s not always important to teen girls if the main character is a boy or a girl, as long as his arc, his storyline, appeals to them. But we can’t risk alienating them by slapping pictures of jock straps and Weird Al on the cover either. (Yet I would pick up a book that had a picture of a jockstrap and Weird Al on the cover, so we can’t plan for every contingency.)

And then we get into the fine-tuning arguments: what about the font? Is it appealing to boys and girls? Is it appealing to alternative/outsider kids? After all, they figure prominently among my intended audience. What about pink, is there too much pink? Girls like pink. Not ALL girls like pink. Punk rock girls may not like pink. Boys don’t like pink, or do they not care? I can’t remember. Maybe boys who READ do not care one way or the other about pink. What about the black; does it mitigate the pink for those who are against pink? What are the rules again?

And we haven’t even touched upon the arguments about imagery, and what we are trying to say with the cover, and what the main message is that we want teens to come away with, and what we are trying to say about Bud, who has many quirks and idiosyncrasies, bomb-building prowess among them.

But we reached an agreement, and we are here. With a cover. And it’s striking and cool.

Even boys/girls may like it.

Hey, Goodreads folks: why not put this on your “to-read” bookshelf? I will also be giving some away in a series of humiliating contests on this page.