April Lindner

Though my season of ceaseless book signings is behind me, I do have one more very special (to me at least!) event planned.  I'll be signing copies of Catherine and Jane at Saint Joseph's University (where I teach) on 11/11 at 11 a.m., in the bookstore.  If you live in or near Philadelphia, consider dropping by.  (Luckily, there's free retail parking behind the bookstore.) Also, as the release date for Love, Lucy approaches, I've been busy putting together the playlist of songs that Lucy would have heard on her travels through Italy.  That playlist will be featured on a book blog near you, as the amazing Alexis and Ashley of With Her Nose Stuck in a Book are planning a musical Book Blast closer to the release day (January 27, 2015). Rock Star Book Tours has also got something special planned for Lucy's debut: a book blast about how the novel was informed by my own misadventures backpacking solo through Europe at age 22.  I might have to dig up so...

Postcards and lattes and Sharpies: Oh My! Now that my season of back-to-back booksignings has drawn to a close, I'm a little unsure what I'll be doing on Saturday afternoons!     Neither wind nor rain nor gloom of night will stay this booksigner from her appointed BAM! Thanks to all the Books-a-Million stores that hosted me, and to all the lovely people who dropped by to say hello.  I've enjoyed spending time with you all.

From New Hope to Lambertville Tomorrow, in the immortal words of Tom Waits as performed by Bruce Springsteen, I'm going to "take that ride/across the river to the Jersey side."   From three to six, I'll be signing copies of my novels Catherine and Jane at Books-a-Million in Mays Landing .  The forecast calls for rain--perfect bookstore weather.  So if you're a South Jersey girl or guy, please put on your coziest sweater, grab a pumpkin spice latte, and drop in for a little snug indoors October bookstore cheer.

New York's Washington Square Park by night I've been wearing grooves in the Jersey Turnpike lately, running back and forth to book-related events.  And the misadventuring continues:  this coming Friday (October 3) I'm Lawn Guyland bound.  I'll be reading a mix of poetry and prose at 7 p.m. at a coffee shop called Sip This.   The location is 64 Rockaway Avenue, Valley Stream, NY.   After that I'll be heading in the general direction of home to sign books the very next day (Saturday, October 4) at the Cumberland Mall in Vineland, New Jersey.  I'll be at the Books-a-Million from 2-4, and I'd love to see you there, Jersey friends! The glitzy interior of NYU's Bobst Library

Someone's garden, Lambertville, NJ With the paperback edition of Catherine on bookstore shelves, I've been scheduling all sorts of book signing in the weeks to come.  The first of these will be tomorrow (Saturday, September 13) from 1-3 at the Books-a-Million in Exton, Pennsylvania (298 Exton Square Parkway). If you're in the neighborhood, please drop by and say hello.  And if Exton's not your neck of the woods, check out some of the other events I've got planned.

It's Labor Day Weekend--summer's last hurrah.  I hope you are taking a refreshing break from work.  I've got all sorts of posts planned for the coming days, but right now, I'm taking a bit of a Labor Day break myself.  So here are a few odds and ends in the meantime. A reminder: it's not too late to enter this exciting back-to-school YA eight-book giveaway. Also, I wanted to share this really nifty webpage.  Someone designed an outfit based on Jane --the heroine of my first novel-- an outfit Jane herself might wear.   Finally, I just wanted to remind all my friends that Catherine is back in most bookstores, this time in her gorgeous paperback incarnation.  If you're in a bookstore, please check her out!     By the way, there's a sample chapter from my next novel, Love, Lucy , in the back.

Today Catherine appears in her new, glorious paperback form in a bookstore near you!  So I'm revisiting the Catherine playlist and turning the music up loud! Just one of my musical inspirations By the way, it's not too late to win your very own copy.   Enter this giveaway.   Or this one . And it's never too late (or too early) for this:

Can't get enough of YA fiction?   Enter here to win eight novels in a brand new Back-to-School giveaway.  And click here to learn more about each book. I'm thrilled that the new paperback edition of Catherine is included. Nico hearts Catherine... though not as much as he hearts red pepper.

View from the Highline, an elevated park in Chelsea In celebration of the soon-to-be-released paperback edition of Catherine , my publisher Poppy is giving away twenty copies.   Enter here to win!   Today I'm doing a little celebrating myself--of New York, the city that inspired Catherine .  But instead of paying homage to big iconic sights, like the Empire State Building, I would like to share a few smaller NYC moments,  for instance this chandelier at the Angelika Film Center, one of the world's best places to see an indie film: And this still life glimpsed at Peasant, a homey and delicious Italian restaurant on Elizabeth Street: And this still life, at the Union Square Greenmarket: Also glimpsed on Elizabeth Street: little girl plus even littler doorway equals an Alice-in-Wonderland Moment.   And this pause between phrases: keyboardist/vocalist/guitarist Michelle Casillas, at Bowery Electric.   (Bowery Electric was my model...

Auntie Em I've never been very good at birthdays.  My cards and best wishes tend to always be at least a little bit belated.  So it's no surprise that I'm two days late in wishing Emily Bronte a happy 196th birthday.  But my wishes are no less sincere. Especially since she's the one who has given me a present: There it was in my mailbox over the weekend, a box of the new paperback edition of Catherine , my Young Adult novel inspired by Wuthering Heights , looking every bit as spiffy as I could have hoped.  (It hits the bookstores on August 19th and is available for preorder now at Barnes and Noble and BAM! )  So happy birthday, Emily Bronte, and thanks for the inspiration.  You may be almost two hundred years old, but in my heart you'll never be a Brontesaurus.

Nothing says summer like iced coffee in Asbury Park.  Am I right?   I haven't been very diligent about blogging lately, but I do have a few odds and ends to share.  A while back I mentioned that a poem of mine was making an appearance in American Arts Quarterly , a journal I love for its celebration of old and new representational painting.  My poem is now up on their website too.   Here it is . tiger lilies in bloom Also, I just wanted to mention one last time that it's not too late to register for my Young Adult fiction workshop at the fifth annual Nightsun Writer's Conference in lovely Frostburg, Maryland.   The conference takes place from July 24th to the 27th, and also features workshops in poetry (led by Bruce Weigl), nonfiction (Marion Winik), fiction (Clint McCown), and sci-fi, fantasy, and horror (Brenda Clough).   If you've been meaning to get started writing a young adult novel or you've got one in process, you might want to ...

This summer (July 24-27) I'll be teaching a young adult fiction workshop at the 2014 Nightsun Writers Conference in Frostburg, Maryland.  I n anticipation of that gathering, the Conference's blog will be posting interviews with the faculty members--Bruce Weigl (poetry), Marion Winik (nonfiction), Clint McCown (fiction), and Brenda Clough (science fiction, fantasy, and horror).   The registration deadline is July 18, and there's still room to sign up and join us. In the meantime, I thought I'd share my interview here with you.   How has working with young adults as a college professor affected your writing of young adult literature? One thing I love about my job is how it keeps me in touch with young adults.  I teach a class on the Young Adult novel in which half of what we do is read books together.  I learn a lot about the YA audience by seeing how my students react to books like Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak , David Levithan's Every Day , John Gr...

   1)     What am I working on? These days I’m writing the first draft of a young adult novel set on a study tour in Greece and inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion.   I'm about one and a half chapters away from the finish line...an exciting place to be. 2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre? I’ve written three young adult novels, all of them contemporary retellings of classic literature; I’ve retold Jane Eyre ( Jane ), Wuthering Heights ( Catherine ), and A Room With a View (the forthcoming Love, Lucy ).    Literary retellings have become huge in the Young Adult world lately--so huge, Epic Reads invented a chart to help a reader make sense of this boom.  My retellings fall into the category of contemporary realism; I transplant characters like Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, and Lucy Honeychurch into the present, exploring how they might remain themselves and how their story would be changed--by ...