G-Dog Blogs: 10 Questions for April Genevieve Tucholke, Author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

 

Hello! *waves a paw* My human has finished her latest round of edits for THE FEARLESS now, but she's so busy trying to catch up with everything else that she's handed the blog over to me, G-Dog.

Today is publication day for BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA by April Genevieve Tucholke (Dial/Penguin Random House). My human has read an ARC and assures me that it's a fantastic book - dark and gothic and twisty. I like the sound of that! Here's the blurb:

You stop fearing the Devil when you're holding his hand...

Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White's sleepy, seaside town...until River West comes along. River rents the guesthouse behind Violet's crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard. Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Or could he be something more? Violet's grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who takes naps in the sun, who likes coffee, who kisses you in a cemetery...who makes you want to kiss back. Violet's already so knee-deep in love, she can't see straight. And that's just how River likes it.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say:

Tucholke debuts with a thoroughly eerie novel set in a quintessential horror-story location: a quaint Maine town. Violet White and her 17-year-old twin brother are living in the dilapidated glory of their family’s coastal estate while their parents traipse Europe. To help pay the bills, Violet places an ad for a boarder for their guesthouse; it’s quickly answered by River West, a mysterious boy who cannily avoids giving straight answers about his past. Violet doesn’t typically pay boys much mind, but she’s soon spending the night with River, both drawn to and wary of him. The enigma of who or what River is pulls readers through the story with steady, unsettling momentum, especially as frightening visions and events pile up (at one point, the town’s children form a ragtag army, ready to battle the Devil with wooden stakes) and family secrets come to light. Tucholke luxuriates in the details of small-town life, including her characters’ gourmand tendencies and their quick-witted interactions, in a chilling supernatural exploration of free will and reality’s fluidity. 

And here's the cover:

To celebrate all this awesomeness, I asked April ten questions:

Books or TV?

Books.

Facts or fiction?

Fiction.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee. Always.

Sweet or savoury?

Savoury.

Shoes or boots?

Boots. No question.

Fields or forest?

Forest. 

Cats or dogs?

Dogs. Dogs, dogs, dogs. (Hooray!)

Sun or rain?

I used to be very rain. And then I lived in Portland, OR and Edinburgh. Now I'm sun, with the occasional big thunderstorm. 

Sea or shore?

Shore. I love the ocean, but it scares me. 

Odd or even?

Odd. Always.

You can buy DEVIL from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million.

April Genevieve Tucholke digs classic movies, red-headed villains, big kitchens, and discussing murder at the dinner table. She and her husband Nate Pedersen live in Oregon at the edge of a forest.

Find April on Twitter

Check out her website

Happy Book Birthday, April – hope you're having a blast!

Wags,

G-Dog.

I'm Back! (With A Thank You, Book News And Info About A Good Cause)

A MASSIVE thank you to Ellen Oh, April Tucholke, Mindy McGinnis and Amy Tintera for stepping in and keeping this blog alive while I finished off my WIP. I hope you enjoyed their guest blogs as much as I did.

Book news: The first draft of my WIP is now with my editor *chews nails*, and yesterday, I got my proof pages for ACID - squee! 

 

Don't they look fab? I love the fonts they've used for the titles and section and chapter headings, and as for the bits where… aha, well, you'll have to wait and see. I can't wait to start reading through them. And I may have ARCs - Advance Reader Copies - soon too!

And now for something completely different. Some Twitter friends of mine, headed by the lovely Nettie Thomson, are collecting jokes to be published in a book which will raise money for the mental health charity SANE. Mental illness affects many people from all walks of life, and charities like SANE campaign to encourage awareness and understanding and initiate vital research into conditions such as schizophrenia and depression, as well as supporting people affected by it, along with their families and carers. 

So how can you get involved? Firstly, go here to find out more about it. Then, if you're not on there already, sign up for Twitter, and tweet your favourite joke, plus the hashtag #TweeHee, in 140 characters or less. There's 3 days left to contribute jokes, so get tweeting!

See you next week!

The Lucky 13s Take Over, Week Two: April Tucholke - The Mystery Notebook

 

While I'm in the writing cave finishing my WIP, some of my fellow Lucky 13s are stepping in to guest blog for me. This week, I'm handing over to April Tucholke. 

When I was 14 I flew to CA to visit my cousins. I read a lot, a lot, of Agatha Christie that year, and made a MYSTERY NOTEBOOK to put clues in. It was just a regular lined notebook that I wrote MYSTERY NOTEBOOK on. I took the notebook with on my trip, fully expecting to find, and solve, many crimes with it. Um...yeah.

April Tucholke's debut novel, BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, is out from Dial/Penguin in Summer 2013. You can find her at apriltucholke.com.