YA

Christmas Reading List

| mlatimerridley

Wow, Christmas is here already! How quick was that? Seems like only the other day it was Summer (such as it was here in Ireland!)!

While things wind down and we have a bit of time off, we can relax and finally gorge on… food, yes… but more importantly reading!

Reading copious amounts of books sometimes feels like eating cakes; you wolf them down and then are left thinking; ‘why did I do that?! It’s gone now!’. Of course there’s always another cake during the holidays!

With that in mind, we’ve decided to put together a wee list of books we are planning on gorging on this Christmas!

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Late to the game, we are both going to read Divergent and Insurgent by Veronica Roth – you could say very up and coming – or already up and came, and we are just very late to the show!

Latimer: My understanding of this series – dystopia (buzz word at the moment, like an –omics, ha, science joke), hmm, there’s sure to be a romance in it and hmm, something about lots of factions and fighting. Okay, honestly, I might be going into this one a little blind!

Ridley: I’m looking forward to this one, the reviews have been good and it seems interesting!!

Latimer: I finally bought The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (finally because I think I have been looking at this one for years thinking ‘I must get that book’). The story is; a boy, called Nobody (I like that already), is raised in a graveyard by ghosts. That’s pretty much all I know; I’m looking forward to it! I’ve only read one Gaiman book (which was a co-authorship with Terry Pratchett; Good Omens, a very good book!). I like the humorous writing style of these two authors, so really looking forward to this book (on a side note, I really want to read Gaiman’s Sandman comics… another story that!).

Ah yes, I’m going to give Delirium by Lauren Oliver a go too… All I know; love is a disease and you can’t love people in this dystopia world (I’m not a massive dystopia fan, but seems most of my loot this year is dystopic in origin!). I absolutely hate the cover of this book (the picture is the cover I have); but that aside, I think the book sounds very interesting!

And I will finally… FINALLY read Angelfall by Susan Ee (again dystopia!), which has a massive Ridley Stamp of Approval (RSA) and therefore, I have no doubt, it will be excellent and so, you should definitely seek out this book out if you haven’t read it yet!

Ridley: And why, pray tell, is this not first on your list!? Thoroughly disgusted I am that you haven’t read this yet! (My RSAs usually have Latimer running out to grab the book-and vice versa I might add- though I know she’s been busy….publishing, editing, working, writing, sleeping, eating, drawing…PAH!) *crosses arms with a pout**

Latimer: Also plan to do a spot of manga reading if I can 🙂 (in English, not Japanese!)

Then I have to do a bit of writing (ah, more than a bit really, I’m behind on a few things! Eep! :(). And eating; currently I have located a packet of ‘Irish Shortbread Biscuits’ and am wolfing them down happily (by myself, I glare if anyone touches them!) with tea in my Moomin cup of an evening 🙂 I love Christmas… food food food… yums (we might be having a cheese board this year, I’m excited haha :))

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Yes, the biscuits are shaped like shamrocks, which is a little obvious, but that’s alright they are delicious 🙂

As Christmas ticks on, we’ve been working on editing a short story we wrote; it’s called Temperance (meaning moderation and self-restraint :)) and is a moment in the past of our character, Temperance Levinthal from Legend Unleashed. It’s going to be free and we hope to have it out as soon as it’s fit to be seen! But we can share this with you (cover time…)

Temperance offical cover

 

Ridley: Ah Temperance, we’re working away on this little story, we hope to share it with you in the new year! Fingers crossed you like it!

And now, some of my books for this Christmas include…

Seraphina, I’ve had my eye on this one for a bit. I just love the old school, sketchy cover. I’ve been on the YA train for so long, it’ll be good to get back to my fantasy roots with this! There are dragons in this world that can shape shift into humans…intriguing, no?

seraphina

Again, more fantasy, another one on my list to get, Shadow and Bone. I can’t wait!! Our friend on deviantart, mseregon, also recommended this! She gave us loads of fantastic ideas for our next book too! 

The main character is whisked off to a royal court after it’s discovered that she has dormant powers. There’s also a bit of a possible love interest in her best friend too. So yes please!

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I loved the first book in this series, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor, her world building is just beautiful. Prague is such a fantastic setting for her book. And there was a great mystery woven throughout it, so really looking forward to what’s going to happen in this next instalment as there was a bit of a cliff hanger in the last one. I was left going (O_O) at the end! Haha.
days of blood and starlight
 
In The Assassin’s Curse, there is, obviously, a curse! It forces the two main characters together. There’s a possible love triangle (i think) and better yet, pirates! How could you not want to read this? Plus the cover is beautiful. I’m a sucker for a good cover!
TheAssassin'sCurse-72dpi

So finally everybody, have a lovely Christmas and New Year (if we don’t see you before then!)!

Enjoy your reading time, and let us know if you come across any book gems!!

MLR 🙂

Magical Moments

| mlatimerridley

You may not know this, but it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that we are fan-girls of the highest order! We search high and low for the ‘squee’; which can be defined as

“The battle-cry of a rabid fan-girl” or more specifically; “To express joy of something”. It’s a happy fuzzy feeling 🙂

The thing that makes us ‘squee’ the most are little relationship moments in stories 🙂

We love, well… love!

For us, love is key to young adult (YA) and urban fantasy (UF) stories. The development of characters and their relationships, a string of moments, is what makes our hearts soar as readers.

When it came to writing Legend Unleashed, we took what we had learned and tried our hardest to develop character relationships that would make our fan-girl selves happy!

Relationship moments are magnificent really; in reality and fiction! They can make you sigh with happiness, recoil in fear or sob with disappointment. And they are the wonderful, glittery glue that sticks a YA story together.

We wanted to share some of our favourite ‘book relationship’ moments!

1.)    Power; the men usually have too much of it (physically, magically or intellectually)! They’re dangerous. But their great power comes at a price; fear. If the girl is afraid, it unsettles the men. We realise they would never hurt her but the fact that the girl believes they could, upsets the men! 🙂

The Awakening: Book 2 in The Darkest Power Trilogy by Kelley Armstrong
The Awakening: Book 2 in The Darkest Power Trilogy by Kelley Armstrong

 A favourite example of ours comes from Kelley Armstrong’s YA series, The Darkest Powers. The werewolf character, Derek, saves the girl, Chloe, when she is attacked by several knife-wielding youths. His display of strength is so intense that it leaves Chloe afraid of him. He is left mumbling that she must know he would never hurt her. It matters that she shouldn’t be afraid of him.

2.)    Jealousy; there is always a rival for the girl’s attention. And there is no reason for the men to be jealous, unless they care for the girl! That’s how we know 🙂

Cybeles Secret by Juliet Marillier
Cybeles Secret by Juliet Marillier

 This can be wonderfully seen in Juliet Marillier’s YA book, Cybele’s Secret. Got to say we really love Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret (two really lovely books).

Set in Istanbul (which is a very exotic location for a story, really adds atmosphere); there are two men vying for Paula’s hand; Stoyan, the warrior and Duarte, the dashing, intelligent, pirate. Stoyan is jealous of Duarte’s ability to arouse Paula’s passion for reading and learning, to talk to her about the things she loves most. Stoyan, by comparison, cannot read or write. It causes him to become easily embarrassed, frustrated and angry.

3.)    Tenderness; even when spurned the men can show great kindness to the girl that makes us all swoon. Who better to inspire, than Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 Mr Darcy is surely the best literary man!

Even when Elizabeth Bennet has completely rejected him (and basically told him off, in a great, and terrible, way… we often wonder, could we have said no to Mr Darcy in the first place? Miss Bennet you are a stronger woman than Latimer or Ridley!!); Mr Darcy does everything in his power to make sure Mr Wickham marries Lydia Bennet (saving the Bennet family honour). His love for Elizabeth makes him compassionate (and we realise how much he cares for her!).

4.)    Urgency; as the relationship hits its highest points, there is a sense of urgency. Some terrible thing has happen to the characters and there is a struggle, which might endanger the girl.

The Realms of the Gods, Book 4 in The Immortals Series by Tamora Pierce
The Realms of the Gods, Book 4 in The Immortals Series by Tamora Pierce

This is beautifully shown in Tamora Pierce’s YA series, The Immortals Series, after Numair and Daine are torn apart from each other by magical stone monsters. When Numair fights his way back to the cliff edge, where they were separated, he is completely inconsolable. He destroys everything in his path to get to her.

It’s the moments that make the story – they are wonderful to read and create! We hope you can find favourite moments in Legend Unleashed too and that it makes your inner (or outer!) fan-girl or boy smile!

If you have any favourite moments let us know!! The hunt for magical moments is never-ending for a fan-girl :)!!

Don’t forget to click and enter the LEGEND UNLEASHED GIVEAWAY, It’s still on! Ends a few days before Christmas!

Giveaway

| mlatimerridley

We’ve off on our blog tour, in the mean time, here’s a great giveaway!

LEGEND UNLEASHED GIVEAWAY

While you’re here, if you’re free, why not follow along on our tour!

You can use our portkeys (otherwise known as linkys!) or apparate if you are of age!!

Virtual Book Tour December 1 – December 15
December 1 – Reading Addiction Blog Tours – Meet and Greet
December 2 – Paulette’s Papers – Guest Post/PROMO
December 3 – My Cozie Corner– Review
December 4 – Little Book Star – PROMO
December 5 – Read Review Smile – Review
December 6 – Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews – Review/Interview
December 7 – Pure Textuality – Guest Post/PROMO
December 8 – Fuonlyknew – Review/PROMO (Thank you to Laura for having us and letting us do a giveaway! :))
December 10 – A Dream Within a Dream – Review
December 11 – Magical Manuscripts – Review
December 12 – Rolling With the Moments
December 15 – James T Kelly – Interview (Thank you to James for letting us gate-crash his blog for an interview!)
December 17- Magical Manuscript Interview – Interview (Return to Magical Manuscripts for a belated interview – thank you to Sandy for having us again! Hope we didn’t wreck the place :))

Internet Hiking

| mlatimerridley
Latimer and Ridley are off on a wintry adventure!! :)
Latimer and Ridley are off on a wintry adventure!! 🙂
Latimer and Ridley are wrapping up warm this December (got cool new winter fashion and everything!).We’re leaving our internet camp to go trekking across the webs to visit other blogs! HUZZAH!
We’ll have guest posts, promotions, interviews and reviews. It will to be interesting! We’ll make new friends, say hello to people and (terrifyingly) find out what people think of ‘The Book’.
If you won’t get a chance to wander with us, make sure to stay tuned here anyway, as we’ll have our own little give away! Yay, free things! 😀 They’ll be purdy things too, even we don’t own these yet, though we want to!
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Virtual Book Tour December 1 – December 15
December 1 – Reading Addiction Blog Tours – Meet and Greet
December 2 – Paulette’s Papers – Guest Post/PROMO
December 3 – My Cozie Corner– Review
December 4 – Little Book Star – PROMO
December 5 – Read Review Smile – Review
December 6 – Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews – Review/Interview
December 7 – Pure Textuality – Guest Post/PROMO
December 8 – Fuonlyknew – Review/PROMO (Thank you to Laura for having us and letting us do a giveaway! :))
December 10 – A Dream Within a Dream – Review
December 11 – Magical Manuscripts – Review
December 12 – Rolling With the Moments
December 15 – James T Kelly – Interview (Thank you to James for letting us gate-crash his blog for an interview!)
December 17- Magical Manuscript Interview – Interview (Return to Magical Manuscripts for a belated interview – thank you to Sandy for having us again! Hope we didn’t wreck the place :))
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If you’ve just tuned in and don’t know what the fudge we’re going on about; what is this ‘The Book’? Why must you warble on so?
Well here’s a quick introduction:
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Now go here to read the first few chapters! If you’re still interested! 😀

Bon Iver: Be Inspired

| mlatimerridley
Bon Iver (this image is pretty blurry, we were far away and this is zoomed up as far as my sweet baby Mr. Sam Sung could go)

Latimer: I was at the Bon Iver concert in the O2 in Dublin this week. It was absolutely brilliant – they were electric.

As I sat and listened, I thought of what inspires me. There are times when some artists just catch me – absorb me into their songs. Music is an unending source of encouragement and motivation; songs can become the soundtrack for scenes I want to write, or characters Ridley and I have created. Songs can set the mood; just by listening to a certain tune I can get into the mind-set to write a particular moment.

I left Bon Iver feeling inspired, swept up in dreams of characters and moments.

As I walked out of the venue, I heard a girl say;

“That was amazingly deadly!”(deadly meaning ‘fantastic’ in Irish vernacular)

Couldn’t put it much better 🙂

Who, what or where, inspires you?   

Legend Unleashed Chapters 1 & 2

| mlatimerridley

Latimer and Ridley: The clock is ticking down to our publishing date! Soon!!

Following on from the prologue in our last post, which if you haven’t read you can find it here, this week we’re posting chapters one and two of our book, Legend Unleashed!  We hope you like them! We’d love all and any feedback. Stay tuned, as more chapters will follow these in the next couple of weeks. We’ve also created another shorter teaser trailer, with new scenes in it, which will be released later in the week!

Legend Unleashed Chapter 1&2

For those of you who prefer our rambling posts on random things than our current ones (we know not everyone is interested in all things bookie!), we will get back to those!!

The Bram Stoker festival is coming up soon, which we will both be attending and we’ll report back! We’re also going to a small gig by the band, Bastille, this week (our excellent friend Orbie says they’re on the up and up, one to watch! It’s great to be ‘in the know’ about these things!! Haha 😀 )

So we’ll keep you posted!

MLR

Legend Unleashed Prologue

| mlatimerridley

Latimer and Ridley have had a surprisingly busy weekend.

Latimer and Ridley: We got our book-proofs back on Saturday morning and have been working hard getting them ready to be sent back to our editor for ebook formatting!

It’s been a lot of work, but we’re getting there!

Slowly coming close to D-Day or MLR-Day!

We just want to share our prologue with everyone! A few chapters to follow soon 🙂

Please enjoy and let us know what you think 🙂

The clock is ticking….

Legend Unleashed Prologue

Book Trailer Unleashed!

| mlatimerridley
Ridley and Latimer have been turned into chibis! Ridley: I only need one eye, like Sauron… Latimer: Takoyaki (octopus balls) anyone? No.. I didn’t think so.

Well, the book trailer is done! Here it is, as we promised! It’s all our own work (animation and art).

Hope you like it!

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Product description of Legend Unleashed
 
When an infamous criminal is unleashed from his prison, it has consequences for everyone in Carwick. Temperance Levinthal in particular…
Temperance is satisfied with her ordinary life. Dealing with her eccentric, childlike parents is all the excitement she needs. That changes when Alastair Byron returns home.
After a failed matchmaking attempt by her father, sparks fly between her and Alastair-just not the good kind.
They are forced together though, when they are implicated in a grisly murder. Their search for the truth leads them to a secret world beneath Carwick, filled with werewolves, wizards and other magical faey.
However, uncovering the truth is far more dangerous than they’d ever imagined.
There are secrets within secrets.
Even Alastair may be more than he seems…
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Ridley: It’s a stop motion animation with black silhouettes, kind of in the style of Lotte Reigner. Here’s some of the pictures below that I took while making it- and when I remembered to take them!

From drawing rough sketches of the different scenes and characters.

From cutting out the silhouettes.

From recording the animation.

The animation was carried out in my garage room (as you can see from the clutter! Go look back at the picture of the camcorder, do you see the empty Tayto box from many Christmases ago? Told you we love crisps in Ireland-see the post Irishisms, if you’re now going ‘Huh?’) Despite the chaos, this was the darkest place in the house, so the best room for animation creating! In a way, I made the light box. It’s a long frosted glass table that I got second hand (at an excellent price) and I went to Woodies (local hardware shop) to buy a light, which I placed underneath the table. It beat paying a 100 euro plus for an official A4 light box. The tripod and the camcorder aren’t mine, they were borrowed!

Latimer: At this point, please imagine me texting, and viber messaging Ridley, saying ‘how’s it going? yeah, yeah? Harder, monkey! Work harder!’, sipping my tea, crackin’ the whip. Editing on the side 🙂 (as Ridley bled real blood, I bled metaphorical editing blood).

Ridley: I recorded the frames of the animation with the programme ‘I Can Animate’, then I used Windows Movie Maker to gather the clips and create the video. Audacity was a programme I used for the music and sound effects. It’s fantastic to use, quite simple once you learn the ropes.

Latimer: I wish I could have strapped a camera to Ridley’s head while she did all of this. Because I would have loved to hear the, ‘oh dear god, noooo! what happened?’ moments. Next time, I will- I’ll document it!

Ridley: Latimer and I collaborated on it all (Latimer: she’s being nice, the animation is Ridley’s brain-baby- I was a sound-board for the story-board, music and descriptions- but really props to Ridley for this!), deciding on what worked in the animation once it was recorded, the font used on the slides and the type of music we needed to create the right ‘feel’ for the trailer.

For the parts like the chains behind the clock and blood drops, I used Deleter screen, which is used all the time by manga artists. The paper has grey tones and designs, which can be cut out and stuck onto your picture. It’s great stuff. I bought it with the trailer in mind when we were in Tokyo after we found one of the best art shops there, Sekadio in Shinjuku (Latimer: working holiday, the only way to holiday! Haha!).

 We were in heaven, except for the fact it was packed and all the aisles were really narrow! And I am a browser, I wander the aisles, which you couldn’t really do there! (Latimer: yeah, poor shop design really too narrow! and claustrophobic!)

Overall, I had an absolutely fantastic time making this. It’s my first ever video, though I’ve always had a love for animation, second only to writing! Most of my favourite movies are animated. Aardman, Pixar, Blue Sky Studio, Dreamworks-I love all their stuff. In Ireland, we’ve Brown Bag films,  Boulder Media and Cartoon Saloon to name but a few of the companies here, all of which are making waves in the animation industry!

So as you can see, I relished the chance to create this trailer and join my two great loves, writing and animation. I just really hope people like it!