Awesome Book Warning: FIRES OF INVENTION

So I'm super excited for my good friend, J. Scott Savage and the forthcoming release of his middle grade steampunk novel, FIRES OF INVENTION. This book is the beginning of the Mysteries of Cove series, and I can't wait to read them all!

Today we get to spotlight the cover, as well as a note from Jeff himself!

About FIRES OF INVENTION: STEAMPUNK! Plus Dragons!
Trenton Colman is a creative thirteen-year-old boy with a knack for all things mechanical. But his talents are viewed with suspicion in Cove, a steam-powered city built inside a mountain. In Cove, creativity is a crime and "invention" is a curse word. Kallista Babbage is a repair technician and daughter of the notorious Leo Babbage, whose father died in an explosion-an event the leaders of Cove point to as an example of the danger of creativity.

Working together, Trenton and Kallista learn that Leo Babbage was developing a secret project before he perished. Following clues he left behind, they begin to assemble a strange machine that is unlikely anything they've ever seen before. They soon discover that what they are building may threaten every truth their city is founded on-and quite possibly their very lives.

Add FIRES OF INVENTION to your Goodreads list.

Pre-order online!

This is what Jeff has to say about the book: Like many of my books, the inspiration for my new series Fires of Invention came from the collision of two ideas. The first time the story occurred to me was while I was watching the musical Wicked with my wife. The moment I walked into the theater and saw the huge mechanical dragon above the stage, I thought, Wow! I have to write a story about that! A few weeks later, I was talking with my nephew, who is probably the most creative kid I know, but whose inventiveness often gets him into trouble, and I thought, What if a kid who had the talents of my nephew lived in a world where creativity was against the law? What if the kids were building . . . a steam-powered dragon? Bam! I had my story.

Powered by great feedback from my agent, Michael Bourret, my good friend and author James Dashner, my publisher, Chris Schoebinger, and the song “Warriors” by Imagine Dragons, I wrote the entire first draft of the first volume in the series, Mysteries of Cove in four weeks. This book is unlike anything I have ever written. There are elements of City of Ember, Dragon Riders, and Hugo in it all mashed up together in a world I fell in love with from the moment I started writing.

I think what’s most exciting to me about this book is that it’s about giving yourself the freedom to imagine. To take chances. Too often we limit ourselves by only trying things we’re confident we can succeed at when what we need to do is give ourselves permission to fail. Often it is when we attempt things with no idea of how we can possibly pull them off that we achieve our greatest successes.

Jeff is the best! Be sure to follow him online on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or his website.

About J. Scott Savage: J. Scott Savage is the author of the Farworld middle grade fantasy series and the Case File 13 middle grade monster series. He has been writing and publishing books for over ten years. He has visited over 400 elementary schools, dozens of writers conferences, and taught many writing classes. He has four children and lives with his wife Jennifer and their Border Collie, Pepper, in a windy valley of the Rocky Mountains.

Tuesday Two-Fer

Okay, so there's more than two things, but everything else I tried for the title of this post sounded lame.

A couple of things I really want you to know about:

1. Simon & Schuster's "Something To Read About" Book Club Sampler. It is amazing--and not only because POSSESSION is one of the nine books you can feature for your book club. EVERY book has a note from the author, a novel-inspired recipe, the first chapter, and book club questions.

I'm in love with it so much, I changed my header to the banner for Possession. You can get the Sampler in several ways. Click here to get it on your Kindle from Amazon (I had it delivered to my smart phone). Click here to see the other easy ways to get the Sampler, including as a PDF file, right on your computer, or from one of the 8 e-retailers. (I, uh, did all three. *grins*)

Also, stay tuned for some more awesome with the Sampler! Plans for an epic giveaway are afoot.

2. I am doing a Live Query Event in conjunction with Dave Farland's Authors' Advisory Conference Calls. You can submit your query to Robin Weeks, the coordinator, and I will critique it beforehand and discuss it on the conference call that day! FULL DETAILS HERE.

3. The POSSESSION Virtual Launch Party!! Oh my heck, you guys. Ali Cross, Christine Fonseca, and Lisa & Laura Roecker have made the fansite into paradise. Go check it out. Mark your calendars for THURSDAY, JUNE 16 because we're going to be partying that day all over the universe. (Well, twitter, Facebook, blogs, the fansite...)

There will be a live chat with me that evening at 7 PM MST--plenty of time for you to get the book on June 7 and come armed with all your questions/concerns/reactions! There will be giveaways in the forums, on the chat, and on twitter that day.

Seriously. You don't want to miss this.

I think that's all for today. I do have more stuff, but I think there's only so much awesome a person can handle at one time. So yeah.

What should I have named this post? Got anything good? Have you ever had too much awesome? Is such a thing even possible?

I Am Not Awesome

Tina Lynn asked: Hmmm...how are you so amazing? Come on, confess. Launched here in an escape pod by your parents during a nuclear apocalypse? Bitten by a radioactive spider? Given a ring that gives you the power to create anything you can imagine? It's only fair that you tell us mere humans so we can stop beating ourselves up for being less than...you know?

Quinn also asked me this question, he just didn't know it. (Check out his post here.)

Okay, so it's totally fine with me if you want to label me with the Awesome Stamp.

I'm just not going to label myself with it. And here's why:

I want to live every day better than the last. I want to keep improving myself and my writing. The second I allow myself to think I'm awesome, I know that I'll slip.

I won't try. I won't work as hard. I won't improve.

And so while I'm glad you think I'm awesome, and I try to accept the compliment graciously, I do not want to think that about myself.

I don't want to think "all is well."

I want to be better today than I was yesterday. In all areas of my life, not just writing.

What about you? What do you tell yourself--or don't tell yourself--to keep moving forward?


And it was Edward, for the official record and all that. He used to watch me sleep in my bedroom. Now we stay up all night, him watching (forEVER watching) and me blogging and writing and tweeting and baking delicious blood brownies.

What I've Learned

Dude, you think you know some people. And by "some people" I mean uh, some people. That wasn't like, fancy code or anything. *grins*

So last week was sort of epic. First there's the whole Do the Write Thing for Nashville. Have you been over there? What Amanda Morgan, Myra McEntire and Victoria Schwab have done is beyond awesome. Be-yawesome? Whatever.

I've learned that when you want amazing things to happen, sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Then there was the Spreading the Awesome event. Believe it or not, I asked several (and by several I mean SEVERAL) people if that whole thing was made of lamesauce before I emailed almost my whole address book.

And you know what? It wasn't so lamesauce. I got over 20,000 hits on my blog last week. Most of those in only three days.

So I've learned that when you surround yourself with people smarter than you (meaning YOU GUYS), fabu things can happen.

I got some amazing stuff from my equally amazing DH over the weekend. And now I feel ready to write again. So what if I lost 37,000 words and most of March and April? I have the tools I need to get back into this thing. Because I have a digital voice recorder and speech to text software.

But on that note, I've learned that my voice sounds really high on a digital voice recorder. Dude, do I really sound like that? But being able to talk to myself about my book is one big pot of boo-yah!

What about you? What have you learned about be-yawesome lately?

You Are Awesome

Everyone needs someone to tell them how awesome they are. So today, that's me telling you, okay? Okay.

And here's why: Because we don't get told enough.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my students said, "Mrs. Johnson, you're awesome."

I smiled and said, "Hmm...I don't feel awesome."

And she stopped walking and just looked at me. "Well, you are."

Just like that. Like it was the simplest thing in the world. And that she couldn't believe that I wouldn't think I was as awesome as she thought I was.

So there.

You are awesome. Even if you don't feel like you are. You simply are. So take this badge, put it on your blog to remind yourself of your awesomeness and spread the awesome!