Tomorrow

One of the things I’ve so enjoyed doing on this blog is featuring debut YA authors at the start of each new season. You may remember the Q&A interviews I did with Winter/Spring 2012 YA debuts and Summer 2012 YA debuts: I find them fun—and I love it when an author’s interview makes me all the more rabidly excited to read her/his book.

Before each season, I go through publishers’ online catalogs, and off recommendations from bloggers and readers and editors and agents, and pick out about 10 YA debut novels that intrigue and excite me. That’s the only criteria: That I want to read them and that they’re YA debut novels. One reason I do this interview series is nostalgic on my part, I think—because looking back at that debut window when anything and everything could happen with the first book, well, it’s a beautiful moment, and I like to remember it and see others enjoying it. And of course another reason is wanting to share in the excitement about these new books. I love expanding my reading list, don’t you?

Now it’s September, and it’s time for the Fall 2012 YA Debut Interview series! The Q&A interviews with this season’s debut authors will begin bright and early tomorrow morning, so come back then to see the first debut I chose. I should also tell you: Every interview this season has a giveaway along with it, thanks to the generosity of the authors involved, so you’ll have many chances to win some great books. Hope you’ll be reading!

Today

But today, before the series starts, I wanted to take part in this picture prompt from Real Actual Hilary—aka Hilary Smith, author of Wild Awake, a 2013 book I am DYING to read, aka “INTERN,” author of the blog “INTERN spills.” She posted an unedited photo of her bookshelf and encouraged others to do the same.

This is what happens when you run out of bookshelves: You find anywhere and everywhere to stack your books. The bookshelves we have can’t contain all of our books, so I had to expand. Here are the stacks I made on the fireplace mantel in the bedroom:

Those stacks are as high as I can make them without the books toppling down. They’re also disorganized in that some of E’s film-school books are in there (you may be able to find which books are his)—and some of my own grad-school course books are there, too.

Not photographed: Three bookshelves and multiple other book stacks elsewhere in the apartment.

Of note in these fireplace stacks:

• The book that made me want to become a writer when I first read it at 12 years old (Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood)
• The book from which I performed a dramatic monologue in acting class during junior high (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte)
• The book that still has my angsty doodles and meaningful underlines during my teenage years (The Collected Works of Anne Sexton)
• The book that blew my mind when I was 18 (Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker)
• The YA novel that blew my mind when I was aspiring to write YA (Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers)
• The novel that led me to give up writing fiction for adults and turn to YA (Feathered by Laura Kasischke)
• The book I borrowed from a friend and just realized I forgot to give back (Birds of America by Lorrie Moore)
• My favorite book during my twenties (Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys)
• One of my favorite YA novels of 2012 (Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield)
• The book I bought in the airport and still haven’t read (The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson)
• The book I should have read years ago because once I did I felt like it was written just for me (We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson)
• The classic novel I hate (On the Road by Jack Kerouac)
• The random movie that shouldn’t be on this shelf (The Lorax)

That’s my unedited bookshelf! Will you post yours?

And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the first Fall 2012 YA Debut Interview… and your first chance of many to win a signed book!

Speaking of, the giveaway to win a signed ARC of my new book is still open for one more day. Go here to enter.