Tag: Girl of Nightmares
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Announcing the Girls’ Nightmare Out #TorChat!
Announcing Girls’ Nightmare Out!
August spells the end of glorious summer days and the return of classrooms and assigned reading. What better way to celebrate the end of summer than with a Young Adult #TorChat, followed by a one-of-a-kind tour!
Tor Books (@torbooks) is thrilled to announce Girls’ Nightmare Out, a week-long event featuring three amazing YA authors: Lisa Desrochers, Kendare Blake, and Marta Acosta!
Girls’ Nightmare Out will launch with the August #TorChat, part of a monthly series of genre-themed, hour-long chats created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter. The chat will take place on next Wednesday, August 15th, from 4 to 5 PM Eastern. As students all across the country try to squeeze in just one more fun book before picking up their textbooks again, we’ll be joined by Lisa Desrochers (@LisaDez), the author of the Personal Demons trilogy, whose final volume, Last Rite, was published in May; Kendare Blake (@KendareBlake), whose debut took readers and critics alike by storm and whose new novel, Girl of Nightmares, a genre-bending love story drenched in blood and terror, publishes in August; and Marta Acosta (@MartaAcosta), author of the popular Casa Dracula series, as well as her YA debut, the gothic Dark Companion, published on July 3, 2012.
The chat will be loosely moderated by Katie Bartow, the blogger behind Mundie Moms, a popular YA review site. Katie founded Mundie Moms in January 2009 as a place for fans to discuss their favourite YA novels. From there, it grew into a community of fans and reviewers discussing every aspect of YA fiction and chatting with YA authors. Follow the chat and join in by using the Twitter hashtag #TorChat!
In the week following the chat, Girls’ Nightmare Out will take to the road, with Lisa, Kendare, and Marta going on a week-long tour, hitting cities all across the country! Dates and details are on Tor.com.
About the Authors
LISA DESROCHERS burst onto the YA scene in September 2010 with her debut novel Personal Demons, which was an ALA/YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults nominee and a Library Journal “Fall First” selection. Desrochers second installment Original Sin was highly anticipated and received rave reviews. And now Tor is proud to announce the release of the conclusion to the thrilling, edgy Personal Demons series, Last Rite, published on May 5, 2012.
With the help of the powerful angel Gabe and demon-turned-mortal Luc, Frannie has been able to stay one step ahead of the forces of Hell. But when the demons killed Frannie’s best friend and destroyed her brother, they raised the stakes. If Frannie wants to keep her family and friends safe, she knows she has no choice but to go on the run. Their best defense is the power Frannie has been struggling to master, but her attempts to hone her skill go horribly awry. If Frannie doesn’t learn fast, the consequences could be devastating—even apocalyptic. What happens when you can’t outrun Hell…or trust the ones you love?
Lisa lives in central California with her husband and two very busy daughters. She has a doctorate in physical therapy and maintains a full time practice. Last Rite is the final installment in the Personal Demons series.
KENDARE BLAKE exploded onto the Young Adult scene with her debut novel, Anna Dressed in Blood. Enthralling New York Times bestselling authors, reviewers, fans, and bloggers alike, Blake adeptly weaves the familiar and the unexpected into a genre-bending, refreshing new take on paranormal romance. Now, she’s back with her eagerly anticipated sequel, Girl of Nightmares, publishing on August 7, 2012.
It’s been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can’t move on. His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they’re right, but in Cas’s eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with. Now he’s seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he’s asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong…These aren’t just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears. Cas doesn’t know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn’t deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it’s time for him to return the favor.
Kendare holds an MA in Creative Writing from Middlesex University in northern London. She lives and writes in Lynnwood, Washington. Anna Dressed in Blood was among NPR’s Top 5 YA Novels of 2011, ALA/YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults 2011 as well as Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 2011, and Kirkus Reviews’ Best Teen Books of 2011. It was also recognized by the Cybils: Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards.
MARTA ACOSTA is the award-winning author of the Casa Dracula series, all of which have hit #1 on Amazon’s Latino Author’s list. Now, Tor Teen is excited to announce the publication of her very first YA novel, the gothic Dark Companion, publishing on July 3, 2012.
Written as an homage to Jane Eyre, Dark Companion is a lush, romantic tale about an orphaned teenager who is chosen to attend an exclusive private school where things are not exactly as they seem. It was originally published on Scrib.com where it garnered over 25,000 reads and became the top YA novel on the site, which was reported by GalleyCat, the New Yorker’s blog, io9.com, and Publishers Weekly. Recently, it was chosen as a selection for the Las Comadres National Latino Book Club for August 2012.
Marta’s novels have been selected as Book Sense, BookPage Notable and Fresh Fiction picks and a Catalina Magazine Humor Book of the Year. In addition to writing fiction, she is a frequent contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly and Contra Costa Times. Marta lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family.
About #Torchat
#TorChat is a genre-themed, hour-long chat series created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter. Guest authors join fans in lively, informative and entertaining discussions of all that’s hot in genre fiction, 140 characters at a time, from 4 – 5 PM EST on the third Wednesday of every month. Each #TorChat revolves around a different genre topic of interest, often of a timely nature, and strives to provide a new media opportunity for readers to connect with their favorite authors.
About Tor Books
Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is a New York-based publisher of hardcover and softcover books. Founded in 1980, Tor annually publishes what is arguably the largest and most diverse line of science fiction and fantasy ever produced by a single English-language publisher. In 2002, Tor launched Starscape, an imprint dedicated to publishing quality science fiction and fantasy for young readers, including books by critically acclaimed and award winning authors such as Cory Doctorow, Orson Scott Card, and David Lubar. Between an extensive hardcover and trade-softcover line, an Orb backlist program, and a stronghold in mass-market paperbacks, books from Tor have won every major award in the SF and fantasy fields, and has been named Best Publisher 25 years in a row in the Locus Poll, the largest consumer poll in SF.
The Best, Worst, and BESTWORST Stephen King Adaptations
Tor/Forge Blog
Written by Kendare Blake
A couple of months ago, a friend and I were talking about Stephen King adaptations (they were running Stephen King with Story Notes on AMC that week) and got to wondering exactly how many movies had been made from his work. We were able to name so many: Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Cujo, Misery, The Tommyknockers, Hearts in Atlantis; we could go on and on.
“How many books has the guy written?” my friend wanted to know. “I wonder what percentage have been made into movies?”
So I said, let’s count. “And remember, it’s not only King novels, but short stories that have to be tallied. Movies have been made from short stories, too. 1408, for example. And we might want to track which works have been optioned for film without ever being produced.”
“You’re getting too involved in this,” my friend said.
Based on the rough and lazy count that followed, we arrived at this rough and lazy answer: Stephen King writes a lot of stuff, and a lot of that stuff gets made into movies. Pick up a short story collection, and somewhere inside, a film awaits. The novels are probably optioned before they’re even written. When will we see a movie version of Under The Dome or 11/22/63? The answer?
Someday. Probably. Odds are looking good.
This conversation got me thinking about the best and worst Stephen King adaptations, and I thought I’d share my list, including a special category for the BESTWORST adaptation. And oh yeah, there will probably be spoilers. Here we go.
THE BEST
Stand By Me
Raise your hand if you thought I was going to say The Shawshank Redemption. Ha! Well I didn’t. That would’ve been the obvious choice. Instead I say that this tale, adapted from King’s pensive novella “The Body” does all the things that King does best in his non-supernatural work: it studies the transitory nature of childhood friendships; short-lived but often the most memorable of your life. It’s a beautiful, careful film, carried along by genuine good times and undercut with the constant menace of knowing these kids are in real danger.
THE WORST
Dreamcatcher
Raise your hand if you thought I was going to say Maximum Overdrive. Well I didn’t. I like Maximum Overdrive. It’s hilarious.
No, my vote has to go to Dreamcatcher, a big pile of turd of a movie, complete with horrible CGI aliens that go up your butt and I don’t know, incubate until you poo them out again. If Ridley Scott’s aliens had taken this route, we would never have been able to watch Prometheus, because no other Alien movies would have been made.
Right now, Dreamcatcher is whispering in my ear about how good the acting was, by Jason Lee and Thomas Jane and Damian Lewis and heck, even Morgan Freeman. It’s telling me that the strong childhood friendships are back in abundance. But dammit, no, Dreamcatcher! Just, no.
THE BESTWORST
I was tempted to say Riding the Bullet, because it’s laughably watchable on a Sunday afternoon. And I do recommend you see it, because it’s great watching David Arquette try to make those scary faces. But in my mind, the BESTWORST Stephen King adaptation will always be the 1990 TV miniseries of IT.
I love IT. I own IT, and once a year I order Chinese food and watch IT, and eat right at the part where they get to the Chinese restaurant, because the eyeball in the fortune cookie always makes me giggle. It’s terrible, and fantastic, and features a pre-puberty Seth Green, and a just slightly post puberty John Boy Walton. Is it scary? Not exactly. But Tim Curry flashing between those hanging white bed sheets is undeniably one more reason to distrust clowns.
So there you have it. My list. With so many films based on King’s work, I expect that few will agree with my choices. I invite you to make your case for your own.
It’s important to note that this list is reflective of the movies only, not the works on which they were based. While I don’t doubt that these days King could have a lot of input on how his tales are adapted, I also don’t doubt that for many of these films he had little control, just like most authors. Someday, it would be cool if Anna Dressed in Blood was adapted, and I could be one of those no-control authors. But in case it doesn’t, here’s a short Best/Worst/BestWorst list of possibilities:
Best: Anna Dressed in Awesome: Directed by the dream team of Joss Whedon and Tim Burton, from an adapted screenplay by Neil Gaiman, a dark, visceral tale with undertones the book didn’t even think of and visuals to kill for.
Worst: Anna Dressed in a Red Dress: Anna reimagined as a 1940’s crime noir, in which Anna is a deranged socialite who murders her wealthy stepfather. Hard-boiled private detective Cas Lowood must run down the mystery in a dark coat and one of those hats. Starring an undiscovered Hemsworth brother and a rapidly aging Kardashian sister.
BestWorst: Anna Dressed in Blood: The Musical.
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More from the August Tor/Forge newsletter:
- Scarily Timely: A Q&A with Edward Lerner
- London: The Ideal Setting by Carrie Vaughn
- The Wildness in My Head by Col Buchanan
- Rule the World with Math and Magic by Anthony Huso
- Cory Doctorow Collection Sweepstakes
Book Trailer: Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
Tor/Forge Blog
Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
It’s been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can’t move on.
His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they’re right, but in Cas’s eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.
Now he’s seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he’s asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong…these aren’t just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.
Cas doesn’t know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn’t deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it’s time for him to return the favor.
Girl of Nightmares, by Kendare Blake, releases August 7th!