YA Bliss's Ubercool Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

It's no secret that I strongly believe historical fiction rocks (see some of my previous posts on this subject: Five Reasons Why Historical Fiction Rocks, You Know You're a Historical Fiction-Writing Geek When..., History, Sexypants-Style).

Thankfully, I'm by no means the only person who shares this opinion about the genre. The amazing Sab H. over at YA Bliss runs an annual Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, and she's just posted info about the 2012 challenge:

www.yabliss.com/2011/12/ya-historical-fiction-challenge-2012.html 

Her rules are simple:

• All historical fiction books must be YA or MG.
• Books don't have to be 2012 releases.
• Anyone can join. 
• You can join at anytime. The challenge runs from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012.

She offers her own Amazon and Goodreads lists as examples of where to find historical fiction reads, plus you can check out 2012 YA and MG historical debuts over at The Apocalypsies. 

Thanks so much for celebrating historical fiction, Sab!!!

I'm heading over to sign up for the challenge right now...

December Question of the Month: Have You Ever Captured a Ghostly Image?

One of my ghostly Maine photos.

I'm launching a new feature today: The Question of the Month. Unless I'm bogged down with revisions, I'll try to launch a reading, movie, or ghost-related question on the first day of every month.

Here's the December question:




Spirit communication, especially spirit photography, plays a huge role in the plot of In the Shadow of Blackbirds. In the future I'll be sharing some highly entertaining spirit photos from the heyday of the Spiritualist movement, but for now let's talk about YOUR experiences with capturing ghosts. Have you ever come across a misty figure that wasn't noticeable when you first took a picture? Do you tend to get mysterious orbs or weird traces of light when you snap photos in certain locations?

I'm attaching my own spooky photos, which I took in Maine during a vacation in the late nineties. Professional photographers have explained what probably occurred to my film (yes, this was back when I still used film), but I prefer thinking of the images as a running ghost (the photo above) and a phantom couple (the photo below).


If you have a ghost photo of your own you'd like to share, feel free to add a link in the comments section of this post.

IN THE SHADOW OF BLACKBIRDS Is on Goodreads!

I've heard legends about a Goodreads Fairy who enters recently acquired books onto the Goodreads site. Well, I just discovered In the Shadow of Blackbirds is one of her recent additions (click here to go to the novel's Goodreads page). Thank you, Goodreads Fairy!

If you have a Goodreads account, I would be honored, humbled, and grateful if you added In the Shadow of Blackbirds to your bookshelf to help me start spreading the news about the book. I'm working on getting myself added as a Goodreads author so you won't have to see that sad little "No Photo" face with the question mark on it.

In other news, I did indeed watch Hugo over the weekend, as I mentioned I would in last Friday's post. In that same post, I also bemoaned the lack of movies set during WWI, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the First World War played a large role in Hugo—more so than in the book, if I remember correctly. Martin Scorsese even wove actual WWI footage into the film.

Even if WWI hadn't been involved, Hugo was excellent. Read the novel first (it's a fast read), and then run out and treat yourself to the magic of the film.