Welcome to the official blog of Third Place Books

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Pulse It & Wattpad Writing Contest!

Know any teen writers who would love to know more about the publishing industry?

Pulse It has partnered with Wattpad.com for a teen writing contest featuring bestselling author Lisa McMann. Wattpad, “the world’s most popular e-book community”, is an online & mobile social networking site where members are able write and share their stories & novels. Members can also rate stories and create a library. 

Wattpad’s Stats:
10 Million members worldwide
100,000 story submissions per month
Over 1 million app downloads per month 
39,000 Facebook Fans
6,600 Twitter followers

The Contest: 

To enter teens must to become a member of the Pulse It and Wattpad communities. Lisa McMann has written a prompt—the first few lines of a story—that users must finish in 2,500 words or less. The contest runs from July 15th to September 15th and the winner will be chosen & announced by Lisa McMann through Wattpad.com and Pulse It. Throughout the promotion, additional content will be released, including videos and excerpts from Lisa McMann’s books: The Unwanteds and Dead To You.  The winner will be flown to NYC and visit the S&S offices to get the inside scoop on publishing.  

If you know any teen writers, let them know about this awesome opportunity!

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Musicals Based on Books... and an Upcoming Author Visit!

At 6:30 PM this Friday, July 29th, we will be visited by Misha Berson, author of "Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination." As luck would have it, TPB staffer Kestrel recently read an article all about musicals! Read what she had to say below: 

A great way to really immerse yourself into a reading experience is to read a book, then listen to (or go see live) the musical adapted from it. Last week, wordandfilm.com put together a great list of the 10 best musicals based on books. A few personal favorites are mentioned, including Wicked by Gregory Maguire, which is a lovely book and a smashing Stephen Schwartz musical, and the memoir of Seattle's own Gypsy Rose Lee, adapted by Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents into one of the greatest musicals of all time, Gypsy. The list mentions more great shows, but here are a few they forgot:

Voltaire's hilarious Candide was transformed into an equally entertaining musical by the great Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein's overture is probably the greatest in all of musical theater, and then of course there is the nearly impossible-to-sing “Glitter and be Gay” (Kristen Chenoweth does a pretty awesome job though) but my absolute favorite is the finale “Make Our Garden Grow.”

And how could they forget Show Boat?! The classic show by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern based on the novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. I'm sure most anyone could hum the tune of “Ol' Man River,” (though maybe not in the original key!) but I also love “Can't Help Loving That Man.”

Seattle’s Intiman developed Elizabeth Spencer’s short story “The Light in the Piazza” into a Tony Award winning musical that features some of the most beautiful music in modern musical theater (in my opinion).

Andrew Lloyd Weber converted Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White into a walloping flop of a musical, but the original novel is a wonderful example of a Victorian thriller, from one of the world’s first crime novelists. 

And let’s not forget Mary Poppins, based on the children’s stories by P.L. Travers, and of course The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum’s beloved books. And I must mention Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls, based on the short stories of Damon Runyon. Can you think of any others? Comment here, on Facebook, or send us a tweet @ThirdPlaceBooks!

Make sure to come see Misha Berson discuss her book on Friday!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Young Adult Summer Extravaganza!

On July 31st, we will be hosting six local YA authors: Kimberly Derting, Lisa Schroeder, Mandy Hubbard, Suzanne Young, Eileen Cook, and Cat Patrick. Each will discuss her latest novel and we'll have treats and prizes, too! Check out the exciting trailers below or click on each book title to read more on our website.







A trailer was unavailable for this book, but read an awesome review at http://blog.figment.com/2011/07/21/ripple-by-mandy-hubbard/



A trailer was unavailable for this book, but read more about the book at the author's website: http://www.eileencook.com/



Come see these authors at Third Place on July 31st at 4PM! 

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Race Weekend!

On Saturday, July 16th, Third Place Books staffers Emily, Wendy and Erin participated in two local events, the Chelan Man and Warrior Dash. 

Emily's race, The Chelan Man, is a weekend full of racing activities held at Lakeside Park in Chelan. The challenges range from a Splash'N'Dash to a Half Ironman. Read more about the race at http://chelanman.com/ 

Emily completed the Olympic Triathalon in 3 hours, 8 minutes and 9 seconds. She went with 20 other people that had also raced with her in Hawaii. This was a great addition, she says, since “both the bike leg and the run were out and back so I got to see everyone I knew multiple times.” One annoyance? “It rained. That was wrong, since it's not supposed to rain in Chelan in July.”



Emily poses for the camera
While Emily was racing in the rain, Wendy and Erin were at the Warrior Dash, an annual 3.5 mile obstacle course race held in North Bend. (Read more at http://warriordash.com/ ) They made their way past fences, braved barbed wire, jumped over cars, dodged hanging tires, crab walked over nets, navigated a balance beam and slogged through a dark pit of “horrible mud that almost sucked your shoes off.” There was even one section of jumping over flames! Amazing.

Wendy (r) with two fellow racers
Erin's favorite aspect of the race was “being really, really dirty,” saying that it was the muddiest she's ever been. Wendy would have liked tougher obstacles. “It'd be cool if they had five walls back to back,” she explained. “The wall was my favorite, for sure.”

Erin (l) gets ready to rock and roll
Wendy summed up by saying, “the race had people from all walks of life, all age ranges, all fitness levels – it was more about personal achievement.” Personal achievement, indeed!

We love having superstar athletes in our midst. Great job, you three!

Monday, July 18, 2011

LFP Reads: Karl Marlantes

Author and Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award winner Karl Marlantes will be at Third Place Books on July 25th for the LFP Reads program. The Third Place Literary Book Club will be discussing his book at 7 pm. LFP Reads will be hosting additional events on July 28th and August 4th.

Author Karl Marlantes with Third Place Books staff member Robert

Staff member Emily reviewed Marlantes' previous book, Matterhorn:

"Thirty years in the making, this novel of the Vietnam combat experience is gritty, intense, and captivating from the first page. The riveting narrative takes the reader up and down the chain of command, creating empathy with nearly every character. Marlantes deftly demonstrates the ripple effect that small decisions can have, often to the detriment of those they were meant to help." - Emily

If you would like to pre-order Karl Marlantes' upcoming book, What It Is Like to Go to War, head over to the Third Place website. Karl Marlantes will be at Third Place on July 25th - mark your calendars!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Charles Yu Interview

Charles Yu's debut novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, now in paperback from Vintage, is a creative and evocative time travel story, about a young man searching for his missing father. Along for
the journey are a fictional dog and a time machine with attitude problem. It's a book that equally investigates human nature as it does quantum physics. Charles Yu stopped by Third Place Books to sign books and chat with
Vladimir over at Third Place Press.

V: HTLSIASFU is one of those books that, when you start to talk to someone who's read it, or is reading it, suddenly you end up finding all these different facets to the book. We talk about some of the narrative dynamics, we also talk about some of the world-building; there's so much stuff that we can explore each time, it's kind of prismatic, we all come up with a new thing. And for me, being a life-long science fiction fan, it's amazing: your book is very concise, and with all the ideas that you have in it you could write a book five times bigger. How did you stop yourself from making your book so detailed?

C: Every book starts with fear. I was a little afraid--I would also describe myself as a science fiction fan, I'm still confident in my fandom. I read Asimov when I was in eighth grade and I became hooked--and I wanted to touch on all of these things and then when I got to some of the world-building and, as you said, some of the meta-science fiction stuff and then the
science fiction stuff itself, as I would get too far down the road in any one area, I would get a little afraid that I was getting in over my head. I didn't want to start building a world and then suddenly realize I didn't
Author Charles Yu
have all the tools to make this what it should be. So I would consciously stop myself as say, "O.K. I'm making my world simpler, I'm going to make this smaller," and then on a large scale that's really what I did; the universe in which the book takes place is Minor Universe 31, and I really did want to get the feeling of a place that was pretty compact; it was easier for me to manage and feel like I could do a small world justice, I'll
try for a bigger world sometime in the future.
 
  V: It's interesting because by the very fact that you didn't have confidence in your world-building, you actually made the book much more accessible to people who don't usually read genre, because sometimes I think when people who don't read genre approach it, they're put off by all the meticulous details. Your book comes off a lot more similar in tone to certain poetry like Alan Lightman's "Einstein's Dreams". I don't know if you've read it-- 
C: Yes, yes I have. I appreciate at comparison. I love that book.
Vlad
V:--  [your book] is so hard to describe and I had to find a starting point so that people could access the book. It's worked out in your favor in that it will have a broader appeal, because of the fact that you restricted
yourself. You mentioned earlier Asimov; are there any other influences that went into making your book?

C: The other big influence-- Asimov, because in the Foundation series he invents a science called Psychohistory, which was an inspiration for me creating Chronodiegetics- this fake science my book. The other major influence that I kept going back to was Nicholson Baker whose very first book, "The Mezzanine", is a book that takes place basically, during the course of a guy riding an escalator one level. The very first words in the book--I'm afraid I might get is wrong--are 'At almost one o'clock.' So he's already indicating to you that this is a book about being stuck between levels, stuck between moments; it's a book filled with footnotes, digressions, it's a book made from digressions essentially. And it's kind of about thought itself and what it's like to be in-between, and keep slicing more and more finely and more and more thin, the moment, and really look at something so closely. It's a book that takes place entirely in this guy's head. And as strange as it sounds, I wanted to write a book about an entire universe that in a sense, is an interior space. 
V: your thoughts on genre-- some people might say that this is a cross-genre book, but you were heavily influence by genre. How do feel about genre distinctions, how do they apply to writers and the industry. Any thoughts you have on that? 

C: I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I'm going to go ahead and try.
My guess is that a lot of writers who are not hard and fast in the genre,
don't approach the book at all--in terms of thinking in genre. They're
approaching it from a very one-off stance; they're saying, " what is *this*
book going to be?" and from book to book they can go wildly in one direction
or another. So unless you're writing Noir or Hard SF, or Fantasy, you're
probably not super-comfortable with labels. That said, I've now written two
books--the short story collection [Third Rate Superhero], and this novel,
and both have elements of speculative fiction, and I'm working on something
now and if I had to guess, it will also end up having many speculative
fiction elements in it. I don't know why, I'm not really trying to get away
from it, and I'm not trying to do it consciously.

V: They're essentially writer's tools rather than something that people think of as genre: convention-goers and such. It seems like a lot of writers outside of genre seem to be embracing these tools because they make stories more creative.

C: That's a great way to put it. I think with these tools you get to have
the benefit of lots of other stories as reference. There are symbols,
markers that I get to put in the background while you're reading my story,
and I get to cheat, I get to piggyback on some of those other stories.
Science Fiction is very rich with conventions, and I don't mean with
'rules'; people know how to read SF, they are expecting certain things, or
they know that there's this universe of stories told already, so that you
have this mental library of what's been done. And because of that it's
actually not limiting, it's more freeing, because people can go and read
your brand-new story having had some kind of instruction on how to read a
story like it but not exactly like it Did that make sense?

V: Yes, yes it did. That's a great way of putting it. 
 
Order your copy at Third Place Books.com