Update: Simon & Schuster Blogger Preview

Sorry for the epic fail of the order of pictures before, I really need to find a better app for writing posts on the go.~~ This is going to be a longer post than normal, so bear with me, and at least there are pretty pictures along the way.

Lots of bloggers showed up at this event! There were also some eats in the beginning. We got to meet a few of the people in marketing and publicity at the YA imprints of Simon and Schuster. I also got to meet Lauren of 365 Days of Reading, Damaris from Good Choice Reading, Matt from A Walrus Darkly, and Rachel from Bookshelf Lust (who was nice enough to help me with my bag because my back is super lame).

The debut author of the upcoming book, Fury - Elizabeth Miles - came in to talk a little about herself and her book. Apparently she is best friends with Lauren Olivre (fairly well-known author of Delirium and Before I Fall ^.~). She read an excerpt from Fury, which featured a mysterious orchid that is symbolic of trouble to come so look forward to that book coming out August 30, 2011.


Sorry for the poor quality of this photo, I was sitting way in the back >.<



All the attending bloggers got a signed copy of the very pretty Fury ARC

After Elizabeth spoke, we got a highlight of some upcoming YA books from late this year and even some books from early 2012. There are more dystopian and post-apocalyptic books coming out although Simon and Schuster has not apparently jumped on the Mermaid bandwagon.

They mentioned the upcoming cover reveal of Fever, which is the sequel to Wither by Lauren DeStefano. The first cover was absolutely gorgeous not only as an overall piece but in its detail as well so I'm looking forward to seeing what they've come up with for the second book.


Another set of covers which was really gorgeous is the reissued set of books by Robin Wasserman - Frozen, Shattered, and Torn (Originally they were named: Skinned, Crashed, and Wired).


Of the book mentioned, I was really intrigued by the synopsis of The Pledge by Kimberly Derting as it deals with languages as a form of societal structure control, which (at least in my mind) is Chinese in concept. I think it is also a novel approach in terms of what has come out for a view of a society so I'm looking forward to reading that one. This one isn't coming out until November 15, 2011.


Also, one that they mentioned which I've personally been looking forward to very much is Goliath by Scott Westerfeld. This is the third and final book in the Leviathan series, which starts with Leviathan and is followed by Behemoth. Although they didn't mention this at the preview specifically, Westerfeld has mentioned before that this book will of course continue in the tradition of gorgeous steampunk art scenes from the story (possibly even more than before?). Goliath is coming out September 20, 2011.


The final book from this portion that I want to highlight is Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley, which just came out at the beginning of May. It is a coming of age story about a boy rather than the slew of girl books we've been seeing, and it was described as a breath of fresh air so it's got me thinking oh really? I want to try this one out at some point in the future ^.^ (I do admit that the cover isn't as gorgeous as the other books in this post)



The author we got to meet was Ellen Hopkins (who is known for writing Crank, Impulse, and a few other novels). She talked about and read excerpts from her new book Perfect, which followed in the tradition of her other books in dealing with some heavy topics and is a companion novel to Impulse. Perfect is written in poetry form, and some of it does get pretty explicit so be forewarned (I am not familiar with the other books Ellen has written so I am not sure if she has been this explicit before). It comes out September 13, 2011. Ellen also briefly mentioned her adult book Triangles, which is based off real-life events (comes out October 18, 2011).


Also a signed pretty ARC!

As the last part of the event, we were invited to the top of the Rockefeller center, but it was quite cloudy so not much to see there sadly although the elevator ride up was pretty trippy. You can kind of see that in the photo below although not really. The ceiling was see-through, and there were flashing lights.



A couple other goodies that were received were Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez, which is about the competitive world of violin players, and This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Opal, which is written as a prequel to Frankenstein.


That's all the book news I can recall at the moment from the event! Apparently there will be an email recap of the books they covered so if I find that I've missed anything, I will have a makeup post for those books later ^.^