Ending Your Series

If you spend any time on the internet, you’ve probably heard a lot about Veronica Mars the past couple of days. The creator of the television show–which was cancelled back in 2007–and key stars (including the adorable Kristen Bell) are committed to finally doing a Veronica Mars movie, only the studio wouldn’t back them. So they did a historic thing: they took the cause to Kickstarter to have fans fund the movie.

The big hullabaloo has been partly about how historic this action is and how the project broke so many records–it raised its goal of $2 million in less than 24 hours–but the internet was already buzzing about the project before the records started breaking. Why? It’s the ending we’ve all been waiting for.

And the winners are…

Thanks to everyone for entering the Underworld Detection Agency Chronicles giveaway! The winners are Elizabeth Blackbourne and Emily Duncan. You’ll be hearing from me!

The consolation prize for everyone else is a book recommendation: A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle. This is the memoir of  the author of A Wrinkle In Time and a million other wonderful books, and in it, she proves her thoughtfulness as well as her writing prowess. It is not a narrative-based memoir but an idea-based one, with her meandering from one topic to another to consider all that she holds dear in life, in intellect, and in spirit. This isn’t usually what I go for, so I was expecting to put down the book pretty quickly, but its beautiful writing and her careful yet interesting thoughts kept the pages turning easily.

And a couple of new websites have popped up for book-lovers. Bookish.com is sponsored by a couple of publishing houses and cultivated by editors to provide book recommendations, interviews, questions, etc. I haven’t used it too much so far, but it’s a great way to browse (although it doesn’t include many non-Big 6 books).

Riffle is a new social media book website, advertised as the Pinterest of books, where you can collect the books you have read, the ones you want to read, and the ones other people are reading. I’m not sure yet how it will really differentiate from Goodreads, but it’s just at the beginning of its life, so we will have to wait and see.

A book, an interview, and a giveaway!

Today is a very special day because it is the release of Under the Gun by Hannah Jayne! This is the fourth installment of an urban fantasy detective series featuring the human Sophie Lawson, vampire Nina, and the Underworld Detection Agency, around to help your neighborhood monster keep from disturbing the neighborhood. It’s part Buffy the Vampire Slayer, part Stephanie Plum, and a lot of marshmallow pinwheels as Sophie and the gang rush to save their boss, their friends, and maybe the world once again.

To celebrate the release, I interviewed author Hannah Jayne about just what her secret power is: