He scooched closer to me on the small couch. My heart started pounding a little harder. The closer he got to me the more I could smell his musty scent. Of nature, gasoline, and... hmm, what else was it? Books? Old book smell? Strange. Whatever it was I found it kinda comforting. I don't know if that was a bad thing or not. Should I not feel safe with him? He hasn't shown me a reason not to. But there's something itching in the back of my head, a little voice, trying to let me know that I probably shouldn't trust him. But whenever it floats to the surface I just push it back down. I mean this is Cole were talking about. I think I would know if something was up. Right? hmm...Cole was staring at me now. Maybe I should say something. I tried racking my brain for something funny. But my thoughts were scattered all over the place and with Cole's green eyes staring me down it was even harder. So I just went for. "What are you looking at?" with a sly smile.

yalit100 yalit100 yalit100 yalit100 yalit100

Love YA lit? Love writing fic?  Love writing fic for YA lit and wondering why there doesn’t seem to be very much for most books?

Join the YAlit100 challenge!

• You MAY claim more than one table at a time.
• You MAY do crossovers, fusions, and AU fic! If you intend to write crossovers and/or fusions, claim the table for the MAIN WORK (so, for example, if you want to write 100 godly-parent-fusion fics, your claim would be “Percy Jackson,” unless all 100 fics would star characters from Anna and the French Kiss or something. SOME ASPECT of all 100 fics must be constant for the book/table you choose!)
• Fics can be ANY LENGTH. You may write 3-sentence fics, drabbles, one-shots, six-word-ficfests, whatever. The whole point is just to encourage more YA lit fic! :)

So far, there are just the first few tables up, but I will be adding my usual amount of ALL THE YA BOOKS.  :P  Join and/or Watch the
comm on LJ for updates, and make sure to suggest any book(s) that you may think I’ll miss or that you want to see sooner!

Total Icon Count: 25
Teasers:

( Icons Here! )

Just sharing some walls I made :)

2 more @ my journal

Thanks to huge crossover hits like Stephenie Meyer's bloodsucking "Twilight" saga, Suzanne Collins' fight-to-the-death "The Hunger Games" trilogy, Rick Riordan's "The Lightning Thief" and Markus Zusak's Nazi-era "The Book Thief," YA is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak publishing market..

"Even as the recession has dipped publishing in general, young adult has held strong," said David Levithan, editorial director and vice president of Scholastic, publisher of "The Hunger Games," as well as of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the series largely credited with jump-starting this juggernaut of a trend.

"You go on the subway and see 40-year-old stockbrokers reading 'Twilight,' " said Levithan, himself a YA author. "That wouldn't have happened five years ago."

Levithan added that passing "the mother test" is an indication that a title could go wide. "If a lot of us on staff are sending a book to our mothers because it's really engaging literature, that's a good sign." Books that have passed the Scholastic mother test? Judy Blundell's "What I Saw and How I Lied," which won a 2008 National Book Award, and the wolf love story "Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater.


You can read the entire article HERE.

++ 01-07 Shiver icons (Sam and Grace)
++ 01-14 Skins icons



all here at chasingtheyears

Maggie updated her blog with details of her Major Linger ARC giveaway:

"The GREAT LINGER GIVEAWAY. I have NINE advanced review copies to give away. I also have an advanced review copy of Brenna Yovanoff's excellent THE REPLACEMENT. Oh, oh, oh. And also, a matched set of Carrie Ryan's THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH and THE DEAD-TOSSED WAVES. And you say, wait, that's not enough. Of course it's not. So I am also giving away an advanced review copy of Jackson Pearce's SISTERS RED.

Are you frenzied? You should be frenzied. I'm frenzied. Of those prizes, TWO of the LINGER ARCs will be eligible for international entries. And ONE of the runner up prizes (t'will be a random selection). Everything else is US/ Canada only."

Check out all the rules and requirements HERE at m_stiefvater

Good luck to anyone that enters!