Cover Lust Friday: The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

   Cover Lust Friday is a weekly meme that's all about covers. Pick a cover that stands out to you, add your reason why you've chosen that particular one or what you like about it. Let's have fun with it and share the love for our favorite covers.

   The Cover:

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa
Published: March 26th 2013 by Harlequin Teen (first published 2012)
Number of Pages: 443 Pages (Paperback)
Series: Yes, #1 in the Blood of Eden Trilogy

   To survive in a ruined world, she must embrace the darkness…
   Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a walled-in city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten. Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them—the vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself dies and becomes one of the monsters.
   Forced to flee her city, Allie must pass for human as she joins a ragged group of pilgrims seeking a legend—a place that might have a cure for the disease that killed off most of civilization and created the rabids, the bloodthirsty creatures who threaten human and vampire alike. And soon Allie will have to decide what and who is worth dying for…again. (goodreads.com)

   The Reason:

   I don't really know what it was about this cover that originally caught my attention but I know for a fact that I adore it. I love how dark it is, thanks to being like 90% black, since I'm quite sure that it perfectly mirrors how dark the story itself is. Yes, I admit I've not read this one yet even though it stands on my shelf at home, shame on me, I know.
   Furthermore I really like the golden eclipse like splash with the title inside of it. The font fits really well and was probably one of the reasons why the cover caught my eye. I know that this one originally had a different cover, which was awful, so I'm happy they changed it. The covers for book two and three are also really pretty so I cannot wait to get into this trilogy so that the entire thing can take it's place on my shelf.

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Want to join in? No problem! Just follow the 'rules' below:

1. Write a blog post about a cover you love.
2. Add your link in the comment section of the original post (click here) so we can have something like a list going on.
3. And if you’d be so kind, I’d appreciate a link back from your own post.
4. Check out other posts, and have fun!

Ask the Author: Amy McNamara (Lovely, Dark and Deep)

   Hey guys!
   On this weeks Ask the Author I have Amy McNamara, the author of Lovely, Dark and Deep, for you guys. Back in February I reviewed, and loved, her novel so of course I had to go and ask her if she would be willing to do a interview. She was!
   Here is her book and her answers:

Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara
Published: December 3rd 2013 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Number of Pages: 342 Pages (Paperback)
Series: No
Buy it: Book Depository
~ Free worldwide shipping ~

   Wren Wells is trying to outrun the accident that killed her boyfriend and wrecked her plants to live a normal life. Instead of going to college, she retreats to her father's isolated art studio. There, in the remote northern woods of Maine, she meets Cal Owen, a boy who wears his own hurt like a badge. But when their connection threatens Wren's hardwon isolation, she has to choose: open up her broken heart or join the ghosts who haunt her. (goodreads.com)

Interview with Amy McNamara

   1 - Lovely, Dark and Deep deals with loss and deep grief, was there ever a point during writing where you had to take a step back and let the story sit for a while just so the emotional state of Wren wouldn’t also spill onto you, or were you able to clearly separate your own emotions from those of Wren?
   To a certain extent, writing, like reading, offers you an escape. I wrote Lovely, Dark and Deep a few months after the death of a friend. The novel came pretty fast and whole. Wren’s story and my experience share no specifics, but I was mourning while I was writing. I think living in Wren’s world and writing about her loss was, at the time, easier for me than living with my own. Her grief allowed me some distance and perspective on my own and I’m sure, in some way, guiding her through it helped me navigate as well.

   2 - Throughout the book we get to see a lot of descriptions of the landscape of Maine, which seems to almost reflect the way Wren is feeling and what she is going through. How important was the accuracy of the landscape for you and how did you manage to articulate it so beautifully that even someone who has never been there can really imagine it?
   Well, the life of the imagination knows no bounds, so “accuracy” is only as important as it is to be accurate about the imagined world. I have a funny relationship with Maine. It has held an almost mythic place in my imagination since I was very young. I learned about the state in grade school and I remember thinking it was a lot like my own. I grew up in Minnesota, another northern, cold, heavily wooded state, but where Minnesota is landlocked, Maine has the Atlantic. I love the water. Maine became an imagined setting for me then. I didn’t set foot in the state of Maine for the first time until about a month after I finished the first draft of my novel. I asked myself the “accuracy” question and decided it would be worth a road trip to check it out. I was happy to find it was much as I’d imagined. Of course, thanks to the internet I’d already seen Maine in images, but that little weekend road trip was a thrill. I kept expecting to see Wren or Cal going by in another car.
   I think the instinct toward pathetic fallacy (humans attributing emotional qualities to the natural world) is a strong one – it’s certainly reflected in all the arts – the desire to find our own emotional weather mirrored in the world around us helps us to locate ourselves.

   3 - Do you believe in karma or fate?
   Hmm… karma or fate? I believe that what you put out into the world comes back to you in the sense that we’re all making the world we live in. Fate’s another question – I can be superstitious but I tell myself I don’t really believe in it – that said, how much difference is there really between practice and belief? Maybe what we practice reflects our beliefs in so far as our actions are really who we are? In that case I guess I believe in fate (or maybe I’m about to drop all my weird superstitious habits).

   4 - How long did it take you from first idea until publishing deal? And how many queries did it take until you found 'the one'?
   I wrote Lovely, Dark and Deep over three fairly intense months. I was extraordinarily lucky with acceptance and publication. I found my agent, Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger, right away. She’s the best and the book sold quickly. I know this isn’t a typical experience. I’ve been writing poetry for years and haven’t found a home for my manuscript yet. I’m no stranger to rejection.

   5 - While writing, do you need silence and some separation from the outside world, in terms of silence: no phone, no music, and no internet, or do you listen to some kind of music or need background noise?
   My writing routine varies depending on what I’m writing. Silence, noise, research, any and all of that depends on the work at hand. Anytime I’m stuck, I go running. Movement helps me kick open mental doors.
   Poems require a different kind of concentration than fiction. I can listen to music when I’m writing fiction, I have to have it quiet for poetry. For both, I need to be alone. Sometimes it’s as easy as shutting myself away in a room, other times I need a longer stretch of uninterrupted time, so I go away. I’m leaving tomorrow for Paris and a month-long residency. Now that my kids are beyond their babyhoods I can leave them for little stretches of time here and there. It’s been great for my writing.

   6 - What do you like to do as a means of stress relief or relaxation?
   I run. I bake. I take care of the people I love. We’ll have friends in for dinner. Reading always works: fiction, poetry, the newspaper, art criticism, science articles, philosophy, cookbooks, the shampoo bottle, whatever I can get my hands on. I also love to watch television, movies, listen to music. I immerse myself in story.

   7 - What is your writing routine? Do you have a specific amount of words you try to write each day or is it more of a ‘writing when inspiration hits’ type situation?
   I don’t really have a writing routine. I write any and all the time I can and as much as I can. There is nothing more thrilling than a pen or pencil in hand and fresh page. I like to write first thing in the morning and just before I fall asleep at night. If I sit down to write midday, I often find my way back into whatever I’m working on by taking it out with me for a run or a walk, first. I don’t really believe in inspiration. I think writing begets writing. If you wait for inspiration, you’re only going to get good at waiting. I’d rather write and write and write until something comes together.

About the Author 

    Amy McNamara is the author Lovely, Dark, and Deep (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers) and a manuscript of poems, the new head chronometrist. Her poems appear in a wide variety of literary journals and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is married to the artist Doug McNamara and they live in Brooklyn with their two children.

 

Review: Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara

Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara
Published: December 3rd 2013 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Number of Pages: 342 Pages (Paperback)
Series: No
Buy it: Book Depository
~ Free worldwide shipping ~

   Wren Wells is trying to outrun the accident that killed her boyfriend and wrecked her plants to live a normal life. Instead of going to college, she retreats to her father's isolated art studio. There, in the remote northern woods of Maine, she meets Cal Owen, a boy who wears his own hurt like a badge. But when their connection threatens Wren's hardwon isolation, she has to choose: open up her broken heart or join the ghosts who haunt her.

“So this is life. Love. We spend all this time reaching for each other and 

mostly we end up hurting each other until it's over.”

   If you are looking for an action packed, dramatic/melodramatic or romance-based novel, keep on looking because this one probably isn't what you are looking for.
   Lovely, Dark and Deep is exactly like the title. This book is really dark, due to the fact that it deals with grief and the struggle of trying to survive even in times when you think you can't do it anymore. This book is deep because of the topics discussed, the characters, especially Wren who is just such a deep and layered character it's breathtaking. And this book is lovely, but not in a necessarily delightful way, but rather because of the feeling of reality one gets from it.
   I've read a lot of books which dealt with loss and grief but many of them failed to capture the actual mindset of someone who is amidst grief and pain and facing the darkness that is life after someone you loved is dead and gone. Lovely, Dark and Deep caught that feeling and mirrored it on point. While reading I really felt like it was me who was going through what Wren was going through. All the things she felt seemed real and realistic. Nothing was overdramatized for sheer dramatic purposes. Everything that happened seemed not like fiction, not like something someone just made up, but rather like the actual thoughts and emotions of a real person grieving.

“If you slip far enough out of your life, time picks up. 

Passes in waves instead of notches. One month rolling by, then another.”

   As mentioned before, the characters in Lovely, Dark and Deep are perfect. They all seem very real, not flat at all, even those who only show up for a scene or two.
   Wren is a fantastic narrator in the sense that she tells you exactly how she feels. She doesn't try to sugarcoat any of her emotions. She feels real, fragile and raw with a beautiful poetic touch and a love for Phillip Larkin. Her personality is beautifully undefined because she herself isn't even sure anymore who she is. You can feel her panic, her confusion and just how lost she is sometimes.
   Cal was great. Despite his sickness he was there for Wren. He didn't run away when he saw that she isn't in a good place right now. He stayed no matter what and it was beautiful.
   It was beautiful to see how their relationship started to build very slowly and subtly over the course of the book, which was another thing that just made this book feel so realistic. Everything was happening very slowly, at its own pace which was appropriate for the state Wren was in at the begging and the end of the book.

“I came here because it's pine-dark and the ocean is wild. The kind of 

quiet-noise you need when there's too much going on in your head. Like 

the water and the woods are doing all the feeling, and I can hang out, quiet 

as a headstone, in a between place. A blank I can bear.”

   All in all Lovely, Dark and Deep is a book which focuses in big parts on an inner process going on inside of Wren, it focuses on her trying to deal with life and loss. It's a very poetic and raw book which captures feelings and throughts truthfully. This is easily one of my favorite books of all time and I'm sure I will return to Wren's story more than once in the future.

   I give Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara 5 out of 5 Stars.