YA Guy Participates in .... The Fall 2019 YA Scavenger Hunt!

YA Guy loves Fall, and YA Guy especially loves the Fall YA Scavenger Hunt!

As you can probably tell by all the blue lettering in this post (not to mention the banner at the top), I'm on the BLUE TEAM this year, along with the other awesome authors you see below:

The YA Scavenger Hunt is a bi-annual event first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! Add up the clues on each BLUE TEAM page, and you can enter for our prize--one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on our team! There are four contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! But don't delay: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will be online only until noon Pacific time on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6! (I'm also running a personal giveaway during the same period of time.)

HOW IT WORKS

Directions: In the author biography below, you'll notice I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the Blue Team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!). 

Entry Form: Once you've added up all the numbers, make sure you follow this link and fill out the form to qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally. Anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, October 6, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered. For more information, follow this link to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

Personal Giveaway: In addition to the prizes named above, readers who enter my personal giveaway will have a chance to win a signed copy of the three books in the Ecosystem series! Like the Hunt itself, the personal giveaway is open internationally. See below on how to enter!

Got all that? Then let's meet the author I'm hosting, C. Lee McKenzie!

C. Lee McKenzie loves to write for young readers. Mostly she writes contemporary/realistic Young Adult novels, but when she writes Middle Grade, they’re all about fantasy and adventure.

Sliding on the Edge, The Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative, and Sudden Secrets are four of her published YA novels. Her next YA book, Not Guilty, will soon be released by Evernight Teen. She has an MG trilogy: Alligators Overhead, The Great Time Lock Disaster, and Some Very Messy Medieval Magic. She also has a stand alone MG called Sign of the Green Dragon. Add them all up, and though it's not quite 22 novels, it's pretty close!

To find out more about the author, follow this link to her website or visit her favorite social media hangouts:

Twitter: @cleemckenzie
FB: https://www.facebook.com/cleemckenzie

About DOUBLE NEGATIVE: "My life was going, going, gone, and I hadn't been laid yet. I couldn't go into the slammer before that happened." —Hutch McQueen.

Sixteen-year-old Hutchinson McQueen is a big time loser. Trapped in a dysfunctional family, his one thought is escape, but everything he does to get away lands him in trouble.

Shackled by poor reading skills, he squeaks through classes with his talent for eavesdropping and memorizing what he hears. When he shoplifts and lands in juvenile detention, the court sentences him to a county youth program. There he meets the priest and Maggie, a retired teacher. They’re determined to set Hutch on a path leading away from trouble. Hutch is determined not to cooperate.

It isn’t until he’s facing serious charges that he confronts the truth—his own bad choices are trapping him. When he's offered the freedom he craves, all he has to do is take it.

To buy the book, follow this link!


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But wait, there's more! I'm also running a personal giveaway, in which one reader will win a signed copy of the three books in the Ecosystem series: ECOSYSTEM, THE DEVOURING LAND, and HOUSE of EARTH, HOUSE of STONE!

On a future Earth, Nature has evolved into a planet-wide predator, and only those with the psychic power known as the Sense can survive. When seventeen-year-old Sarah sets out into the Ecosystem on a mission of vengeance, she must face the Ecosystem's deadliest creatures and travel to its most terrifying places. And she must decide whether to save the boy she loves at the cost of losing everything else she holds dear.

You can enter my personal giveaway by using the Rafflecopter form below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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The Fall 2019 Hunt is over, but there are still a few hours to enter my personal giveaway. I'll announce the winner soon!

YA Guy Reviews... NELIEM by Clare Di Liscia and WASTED PRETTY by Jamie Beth Cohen!

YA Guy has a confession: I haven’t read much YA this year. There are lots of reasons for that, starting with the fact that I’ve been catching up on some literature I want to teach (and alas, I don’t have the opportunity to teach YA). But since I am YA Guy, I did read two really great debuts/new releases that I want to recommend. Both are similar in being the stories of young women growing to maturity during difficult times, though one is cast in the fantasy mode and the other in contemporary realism.

The first is Neliem, a YA fantasy by debut author Clare Di Liscia. This action/romance is very much in the “kick-butt heroine” vein, which I don’t always enjoy; at times, I feel that the character of the strong, capable, physically active YA heroine has become a mere reflex on the author’s part without context or nuance. Happily, that’s not the case with Neliem, which offers a fully realized, flesh-and-blood main character who kicks her share of butt while remaining complex and convincing.

The narrator and protagonist of Neliem is Oriana, a teenage girl living in squalid poverty on an island nation that’s fallen under the control of the mainland conquerors her people name Untouchables. Her prospects are bleak; many of her fellow islanders have died of the plague that almost took her, and those who survive eke out an existence of penury, servitude, and near-starvation. Oriana draws strength by imagining herself as the legendary hero Neliem, a savior of the poor and unprotected. But when Ezra, an Untouchable boy possessed of all the wealth and power Oriana can only dream of, unexpectedly chooses her as his bride in a coercive ceremony she has little choice but to obey, she’s whisked away to an alien world and forced to live in the household of a husband she can’t trust. Whether she can become the hero she longs to be drives the action of this novel, as Oriana uncovers the truth of the Untouchable culture and of the boy who claims to love her.

I won’t give away whether Ezra truly loves Oriana, but I will give away that I did. She’s a remarkable character, fiercely drawn and richly layered, provided with a credible personal and social history that makes her thoughts, feelings, and actions utterly believable. She can be scared and overwhelmed one minute, risk-taking and bold the next—but she’s never, from first page to last, anything less than fully real. The world she inhabits took me a bit longer to settle into, probably because Di Liscia doesn’t rush the world-building but lets the details emerge gradually. This approach makes sense, inasmuch as we’re discovering the world through the relatively inexperienced Oriana’s eyes, learning it as she does. The result is a fascinating plunge into an alternative reality that feels both fantastic and familiar, which is what the best fantasy novels achieve.

From YA fantasy, I turn to YA contemporary realism with Jamie Beth Cohen’s debut novel Wasted Pretty. I’ll admit I was sold on this book from the first page, which opens on a summertime film screening at Flagstaff Hill in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park, circa 1992. Yes, these screenings are real—they’ve been going on for years, and in fact my first date with my wife was at one such event! So as a lifelong Pittsburgh resident, I had an immediate connection to the world Cohen recreates.

That wouldn’t have been enough to hold my interest, though, if the main character's story weren’t equally strong. Cohen’s narrator is sixteen-year-old Alice Burton, daughter of a radio DJ and a mother who’s developed a line of health foods (and tested them on her daughter, enabling Alice to shed pounds and show the world a newly curvy body). That’s good in one respect—it attracts the attention of college student and aspiring grunge rocker Chris Thompson—but it also garners the unwanted advances of professional baseball player and family friend Karl Bell. An act of sexual assault traumatizes Alice just as other parts of her life seem to be falling apart as well: her dad’s gambling addiction is preventing him from keeping up with tuition payments to her private high school, her relationship with her best friend is feeling the strain of boyfriends and beer bashes, and the enigmatic Chris Thompson clearly likes her but won’t fully commit to her. Spanning a turbulent summer, Wasted Pretty paints an unsparing portrait of a young woman coming to terms with who she is and what she wants from life.

The disturbing scene in which Karl Bell assaults Alice is the novel’s centerpiece, with everything else connected to it in some way. But there’s no shortage of marvelously realized scenes to choose from in this novel (perhaps my favorite being the nicely understated scene in which Alice and her father overcome their estrangement to share a meal at the neighborhood Friendly’s). Cohen gets the local and period details right, delving into the music groups, hair and clothing styles, and high school party culture of the day; she also gets the interior details right, with Alice’s pain, confusion, hopes, and anger coming through with perfect timing and clarity. The butterfly on the book’s cover becomes a multilayered symbol for the transformation Alice undergoes, with all its struggles, possibilities, and triumphs intact.

You don’t need to know Pittsburgh to love Wasted Pretty. You just need to know someone like Alice—and we all do.

YA Guy Hosts... Kai Strand, author of I AM ME!

YA Guy is tickled to host one of my favorite authors, Kai Strand, whose latest novel, the YA contemporary I AM ME, is now available. Kai's here to talk about how she manages to be so prolific as an author, and then, as a special treat, she's provided an excerpt from her new book. Read on, and then find out about Kai and where to buy I AM ME!

Just Ger ‘Er Done!

Inspiration from Kai Strand

People often think I’m a fast writer, but I know plenty of authors who write faster than me. They’ll post their daily word counts of upwards of 5,000! I’m lucky if I hit 1,500. What I am – or have been – is consistent. Think: The Little Engine That Could or the tortoise from The Tortoise and The Hare.

My first book, a middle grade fantasy, The Weaver, was published at the very end of 2010 and I immediately began a quest to make it the world’s best-selling book. When I wasn’t even successful in scheduling my first book signing until March of 2011, I realized that marketing a book was both harder than I expected and very time consuming. I didn’t understand that I needed to concentrate more on writing the next book until well into 2011. Therefore, my second middle grade – a contemporary titled SAVE THE LEMMINGS – wasn’t published until 2012. But the second book in my Weaver Tale series was also published in 2012, The Wishing Well. I discovered that I liked publishing two books a year. I liked it very much, so that became my goal.

My first young adult book, King of Bad, was published in 2013 and I got a taste of good sales and that bestseller title I’d hoped for. In 2014, I decided to try my hand at self-publishing with a couple young adult novellas, all while publishing two different titles with publishers – making my publication count for the year FOUR books. I found it difficult to promote, though, and learned I wanted to keep it at two books a year. In 2015 I added a new pen name (L.A. Dragoni) so I could write romance for the grown-ups among us.

Needless to say, in order to publish all of these books, I had to keep writing. And if I average fewer than 1,500 words a day, that means I have to sit down and write on a regular basis. It isn’t always easy. I get sucked into social media or composing blog posts. There are plenty of times I have simply forced myself to open my WIP and just put some dang words down. And the crazy thing is…when you do that…seven years later, you have FIFTEEN books published.

It’s hard for me to comprehend that I’ve accomplished that, but with more books in the pipeline and several others underway…I know it won’t stop there.


I Am Me by Kai Strand
YA Contemporary

Despite—or perhaps because of—her fancy car, private school education, and life of privilege, Lola Renaldi has become a volunteer junkie. Feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, visiting the elderly—if it’s a good cause, she’s done it.

Lola’s favorite stint, building affordable houses, puts her directly in the path of Rodney. He refuses to discuss why he’s doing community service, but it’s clear he’s hiding something dark about his past. As their friendship grows, Lola begins to question the true reasons for her obsessive volunteerism and her view of those she has pledged to help.

She is only beginning to understand how lucky she truly is when her life falls apart. After losing friends, her boyfriend, even Rodney, Lola finally recognizes which parts of her life she wants to hang onto and what specifically she wants to go after. But with all she’s been through, will she be able to hang onto who she wants to be? Or will she lose all that defines her?


Excerpt: 

“Have you ever been completely surprised to learn the truth behind someone’s circumstances?”

Rod freezes, paintbrush held high overhead. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I have a friend who seems to have everything, you know? I’ve always known how far from the truth that is, but she’s got a rock solid façade. Or, she did until last weekend.”

Rod’s rigid posture relaxes, and he resumes spreading paint along the fascia. “Wasn’t last week homecoming?”

Tipping my head up, I stare at Rod in surprise. “Yeah, how did you know?”

I see one side of his mouth quirk. “You weren’t here last week. Hank said something about hair and makeup and fingernails.”

I continue to stare up at Rodney. His long frame at the top of a tall ladder makes my head spin in some reverse vertigo thing.

He stops working again and shifts sideways on the ladder. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Oh.” If I shake my head, will the myriads of thoughts spinning through it dissipate into dust, or at least fall into a nice orderly pile that I can sort through later? “I’m…it’s just…” Shrug.

Resting the brush in the paint tray, he somehow adopts a super casual pose on the ladder, perched precariously sideways, with his arms crossed over his chest. His tone is unexpected in its gentleness. “Is this 'friend' really you?”

“What? No!” I leap to my feet and his eyebrows arch, which for some reason makes me mad. “Rodney, why would you even think that?”

His head cocks sideways in consideration. “Someone who seems to have everything. Someone you know well enough that you’re the only one to know she doesn’t.”

I slam my hands on my hips, though really, I want to slug him. “It’s a friend of mine. I’ve known her forever.” A strange expression passes over his face and my anger wafts away on the chilly breeze. “Do you have any friends, Rodney?”

He gives a strange one-shoulder shrug that he probably hopes appears dismissive but is actually an admission of truth. The question of what he did to earn community service—tons of hours of community service, apparently—flashes through my mind and for the first time I wonder if befriending him like I have was really so smart.

A tinge of anger darkens his caramel colored eyes making me think of toffee.

“We’ve moved a lot.”

Oh. Not what I expected. Before I can reply, he continues.

“Poor people do that, you know.”

I open my mouth to voice my offense. His tone is so accusatory. But I see guilt and regret and embarrassment flash in his expression, so I slam my lips shut.


Here's where to buy I AM ME:

Amazon
B&N
iBooks

About the author: When her children were young and the electricity winked out, Kai Strand gathered her family around the fireplace and they told stories, one sentence at a time. Her boys were rather fond of the ending, “And then everybody died. The end.” Now an award winning children’s author, Kai crafts fiction for kids and teens to provide an escape hatch from their reality. With a selection of novels for young adult and middle grade readers, Kai entertains children of all ages and their adults. Learn more about Kai and her books on her website, www.kaistrand.com.

To connect with Kai, go here:
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YA Guy Celebrates... The Release of BLACK FLOWERS, WHITE LIES by Yvonne Ventresca!

YA Guy's excited to be celebrating the release of BLACK FLOWERS, WHITE LIES by Yvonne Ventresca! I absolutely loved this book, which I had a chance to read before publication--check out my review here. Then read the book's details and teaser, and be sure to enter the giveaway below!

BLACK FLOWERS, WHITE LIES 

Publisher: Sky Pony Press Publication: October 4, 2016

Her father died before she was born, but Ella Benton knows they have a supernatural connection. Since her mother discourages these beliefs, Ella keeps her cemetery visits secret. But she may not be the only one with secrets. Ella’s mother might be lying about how Dad died sixteen years ago. Newfound evidence points to his death in a psychiatric hospital, not as a result of a tragic car accident as her mother always claimed. After a lifetime of just the two of them, Mom suddenly feels like a stranger. When a handprint much like the one Ella left on her father’s tombstone mysteriously appears on the bathroom mirror, at first she wonders if Dad is warning her of danger as he did once before. If it’s not a warning, could her new too-good-to-be-true boyfriend be responsible for the strange occurrences? Or maybe it’s the grieving building superintendent whose dead daughter strongly resembles Ella? As the unexplained events become more frequent and more sinister, Ella becomes terrified about who—or what—might harm her. Soon the evidence points to someone else entirely: Ella herself. What if, like her father, she’s suffering from a breakdown? In this second novel from award-winning author Yvonne Ventresca, Ella desperately needs to find answers, no matter how disturbing the truth might be.

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Excerpt from Black Flowers, White Lies

I take the stairs down. Once the stairwell door closes behind me, the basement seems darker than ever, as if the electricity is off. The light on my phone helps guide me to the laundry room. I flick the switch. Nothing happens. Not even the one good light turns on.

Maybe Norma’s in the middle of fixing the lightbulbs. She could have turned off the circuit breaker or something. But when I open the dryer, the drum light turns on as I dump the clothes into the basket. The electricity is working after all.

The light from the dryer illuminates the space and some­thing catches my eye. I focus my phone on the wall to my left.

“No.” I back up, banging into the open dryer door.

One word is scrawled in red capital letters across the wall: DAUGHTER. A bloody handprint drips in the space underneath.

I grab the basket. A cat T-shirt falls, but I don’t stop. I need to escape, fast. The elevator takes forever. The doors slide open. I expect demons, monsters, ghouls. It’s empty.

On our floor, I race to our apartment, fumble with my keys. My hands tremble too much to open the lock. “Blake!”

When he opens the door, I drop the basket to grab his arm. “Come with me.”

“El, what’s going on?”

I can’t speak on the elevator ride to the basement.

“Seriously, are you okay? You’re scaring me.”

“I’ll show you.”

I turn my phone light on when we leave the elevator and pull him into the dark laundry room. I illuminate the wall but can’t bear to look. “See?”

He’s quiet. I figure he’s as frightened as I am.

“See what?”

I turn my head and shine the light where the red scrawl was minutes before.

There’s nothing.

“Why are we in the dark?” Blake asks, flipping the laundry room switch.

The lights come on. The sudden brightness makes me blink as I stare at the blank wall.

About the Author

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads | Pinterest

Yvonne Ventresca’s latest young adult novel, BLACK FLOWERS, WHITE LIES will be published by Sky Pony Press in October 2016. Her debut YA novel, PANDEMIC, won a 2015 Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. In PANDEMIC, a teen struggles to survive not only a deadly outbreak and its real-life consequences, but also her own personal demons. Ventresca's other works include the short story “Escape to Orange Blossom,” which was selected for the dystopian anthology PREP FOR DOOM, along with two nonfiction books, PUBLISHING (Careers for the 21st Century) and AVRIL LAVIGNE (People in the News).

Giveaway

Prize pack includes a three panel rustic chalkboard with a $25 Amex gift card, a $25 Sephora gift card, and a signed copy of Black Flowers, White Lies. a Rafflecopter giveaway

YA Guy Reviews... RESCUED by Eliot Schrefer!

When YA Guy was a lad of five, I visited the Pittsburgh Zoo with my father. This was in the days that zoos were essentially prisons, with animals held in solitary confinement in barred, concrete cells. Being too young to realize the full implications of that, I wandered with my dad to the ape and monkey house, my favorite part of the zoo. I enjoyed watching the gorilla in particular, though even at that age, it puzzled me that he was alone, that he did little but stare dully out of his cage all day, except when on occasion he'd regurgitate his food and pick through it. But again, at age five, I was thinking much more about my own pleasure at seeing such an awesome animal than about that animal's well-being, much less his rights.

On this particular day, a surprise awaited me: a trainer had a baby chimpanzee named Geraldine, and was offering visitors the chance to hold her. I eagerly volunteered, and when the little creature wrapped her furry arms around my neck and rested her head on my cheek, I felt something that Eliot Schrefer captures expertly in his book RESCUED:

"It was the first time I'd held something so delicately alive, something it was in my power to drop or save. I went silent with responsibility."

In Schrefer's book, it's a baby orangutan that the narrator, John, is holding, a present from John's irresponsible and eager-to-please father. But the feeling is almost entirely the same. It's from the moment I held Geraldine that I date not only my love for great apes but, far more importantly, my sense of responsibility to them.

RESCUED is the third book in Schrefer's planned four-book YA series about the great apes: bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. Each book, though entirely different from the others in setting and character, features a young person's relationship with one of the four species of ape. In the first two, ENDANGERED (bonobos) and THREATENED (chimpanzees), the settings are African and the apes living in a wild or, at least, semi-wild condition. In RESCUED, by contrast, the setting is the U.S., and the orangutan, Raja, grows up as a captive house pet. The book's action revolves around John's growing realization that Raja is not rightfully his and the teen's subsequent efforts to return him to Sumatra, from which he was stolen as a baby.

I'm going to put it out there right now: Schrefer's books are my favorite YA series of all time. That's partly because of their subject matter, but it's also because of their beautiful writing, vivid characters (human and ape), lush descriptions of ape behavior and human-ape interaction, and keen moral sensibility. Schrefer doesn't preach, but he doesn't pull punches either: John comes to learn that it's wrong, plain and simple, to keep wild things captive, and he takes enormous risks to rectify a crime to which, as a child, he was a willing if unknowing accomplice. Late in the book, the following moment of intimacy between ape and human clinches John's determination to set his childhood friend free:

"Raja kept probing me. When his golden eyes met mine directly I felt more fully seen by him than by any human in my life. It was like he was navigating back and forth in my heart, sifting and sorting every little feeling he found. Neither of us had a self while our eyes were linked: John and Raja were shared between us."

Apes are as close to human as non-human animals can be. But they're also utterly unique creatures, with lives and needs and agendas distinct from ours. That we've come close to extinguishing all of our nearest relatives on Earth (orangutans, along with mountain gorillas, being the most critically endangered of the great apes) speaks very poorly for our humanity. But in a book such as RESCUED, we glimpse what our relationship to these creatures could and should be: one of mutual interest, love, and respect, starting with respect for their right to live their lives without our interference. Maybe, if we can learn this about the apes, we can learn it about the rest of the world's inhabitants as well.

YA Guy Reads... YA Contemporary (plus a giveaway)!

As you know, YA Guy’s mostly into speculative fiction: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, you name it. But from time to time I pick up something outside my comfort zone—not too far, mind you, because I can’t see myself reading a book about kissing or vampires (or kissing vampires). Over the past several weeks, however, I’ve read two YA Contemporary novels, and both were excellent.

First was THE TRUTH by Jeffry W. Johnston. This YA thriller concerns a teenage boy, Chris, who wakes up from a chloroform-induced sleep to find himself duct-taped to a chair in an unidentified location, with the brother of the runaway Chris shot in his kitchen threatening to maim him if Chris doesn’t tell the truth about what happened that night. From there, the novel bounces back and forth between the present and Chris’s memories of the events leading up to the shooting. The son of a police officer who died in the line of duty and the older brother of a ten-year-old he suspects was always his father’s favorite son, Chris tells himself he’s done everything to protect his younger brother—including on the night of the shooting. But how can he tell his abductor the truth when he’s hiding it from himself?

THE TRUTH is an intense, fast-paced read, with incredible tension but, given the set-up, relatively little overt violence (for which I was thankful). The story is really about relationships: between Chris and his father, Chris and his brother, and, ultimately, Chris and his abductor. And though I found some of the revelations late in the book less shocking than they were likely intended to be, I was totally hooked by the story of Chris’s coming to terms with his father, his family, and himself.

After reading THE TRUTH, I turned to Pittsburgh YA writer Siobhan Vivian’s latest, THE LAST BOY AND GIRL IN THE WORLD. Given that title, you might think this is a post-apocalyptic tale, but it’s actually a realistic story about a high school junior, Keeley, whose Pennsylvania town has suffered severe flooding and is fighting to stop a riverfront real estate deal that will submerge the town for good. Meanwhile, the boy of Keeley’s dreams has finally started to show some interest in her, and her father, injured years ago in a work accident, has finally found a cause to rouse him from his passivity. But while Keeley becomes drawn into the excitement of these new romantic and familial developments, her lifetime friendships suffer.

What I liked most about LAST BOY AND GIRL is that it’s not only—or even mostly—a love story. Or it is, but as Keely herself discovers, it’s less about her love for a boy than about her love for her family, her town, and her best friend. Vivian’s pacing is totally unlike Johnston’s; where THE TRUTH grabs you at once and never lets go, LAST BOY AND GIRL lets events unfold gradually, revealing ever deeper layers in Keeley’s personal relationships and in the drama of her failing town. I could wish some of the environmental implications of this scenario had been drawn out more explicitly, but that’s not the story Vivian wants to tell. What she does want to tell is a story of the difficult choices one teenager faces as she tries to keep her life from going under, literally and symbolically, and Vivian tells that story simply and beautifully.

Chances are I’ll return to science fiction soon (in fact, I’ve got a manuscript due on my editor’s desk, so I’ll probably be doing more writing than reading in the next month or so). But I’m glad I took a detour and discovered these two great books!

Bonus! Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a SIGNED hardcover copy of THE LAST BOY AND GIRL IN THE WORLD! (U.S. only.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

YA Guy Interviews... Amy Allgeyer, author of DIG TOO DEEP!

Today on the blog, YA Guy's thrilled to interview Amy Allgeyer, author of DIG TOO DEEP, which comes out April 1! Amy took the time to answer my questions about her writing process and about the environmental issues in her debut novel, which concerns one teenage girl's effort to fight mountaintop coal mining in a small Appalachian town. You can read my review of this terrific novel right here.

And now, without further ado, here's Amy!

YA Guy: Hi Amy! Welcome to the blog. To start out, I'd love to hear about your journey to publication.

Amy Allgeyer: “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” That’s how it feels anyway. I decided to write my first book twelve years ago. I landed an agent with that book, but it didn’t sell. Since then, I’ve written many more books, lost an agent, found a dream agent, worked through revisions with agents or editors only to have them change jobs or leave publishing for good before we were finished. All in all, I had pretty much the same journey most authors have. We all get those wicked near-misses and crushing lows. Then we turn around and pour all that into the next book. Or we give up and don’t become authors at all. I very nearly did that, and the only things that kept me going were my crit partners.

YAG: I'm glad you stuck with it, because DIG TOO DEEP tells a really important story. Can you tell us about mountaintop coal mining? How did you get interested in it? How much of a problem is it?

AA: Mountaintop Removal Mining started back in the 1970’s. By 2009, over five hundred mountains had been blasted away. Nearly a million acres of forest are gone. The health issues speak for themselves: people living in MTR communities are fifty percent more likely to die of cancer, and babies born near MTR mines are forty-two percent more likely to have birth defects.

I was born in Kentucky. When I was seven, I moved to North Carolina with my parents but my six brothers and sisters (all older) stayed in KY, so I spent a lot of time driving back and forth through Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. The Appalachians represent home to me—even now when I live a thousand miles away. So it’s heartbreaking to see them blown apart, and know some special places are gone forever. And since MTR mining creates fewer jobs than traditional mining, it means these communities are stuck with less money, fewer jobs, more sickness, more death… It’s really awful.

YAG: So this sounds like a very important book to you. What was your research process like for DIG TOO DEEP?

AA: Involved! Even beyond the MTR research, there are aspects of the book that I (thankfully) don’t have personal experience with: prison, water testing, meth addiction, extreme poverty. My writing process was like: Write two pages. Google whether prisoners have access to email. Write another page. Google side-effects of methamphetamine addiction. I also depended a lot on my sister’s experiences volunteering in mountain communities in Eastern Kentucky. Her stories were so insightful and gave me a current and realistic picture of what poverty looks like in that area of the country. The cancer…that I know all too well, as my mom died of cancer. Those scenes where Liberty is caring for Granny were some of the hardest I’ve ever had to write.

YAG: They're also some of the best scenes in the novel, and I can tell they come from a very personal place. To shift back to the environmental issues: I’m from Pennsylvania, a major coal-producing state. What would your answer be to someone who said, “We need to continue mining coal to keep the economy strong and to supply the nation’s energy”?

AA: Yes, Pennsylvania has MTR issues, too, as well as fracking, which is another huge concern. To me, the biggest argument against our dependence on coal is just common sense. It’s reported that we have enough world-wide coal reserves to power us for another twenty-three years. Given that we’re going to have to depend on something else so soon, why would we continue to destroy the environment and sicken communities by expanding the search for coal? We should be focusing on alternative energy and what we’re going to do when the fossil fuels run out. The fabrication of products and infrastructure that use alternative energy (like wind, solar, hydro) would create manufacturing and light industrial jobs to replace the mining jobs that those communities so desperately need. It seems like a no-brainer that we should be weaning ourselves off coal now…not continuing to destroy the environment and expecting our kids to come up with something better once they’re the grown-ups.

YAG: I couldn't agree more! So, what’s next for you as a writer?

AA: Well…I have an option book due to my publisher later this year. I’m currently working on a contemporary Southern-gothic YA novel that’s beginning to feel overly epic and out of control. Think “The Thorn Birds” meets “The Sound and the Fury.” Some days, I think I’ve got things under control. Other days, it feels like I’m trying to lasso a rhino with wet spaghetti. So…typical writer’s journey!

YAG: Yes, that sounds painfully familiar! Thanks, Amy, for being on the blog and sharing your stories. Readers, if you want to find out more about Amy and DIG TOO DEEP, here's where to start digging:

Amy Allgeyer was born in Kentucky, the youngest of seven kids. As an architect, she spends her days remodeling hundred year-old homes in Idaho, where she lives with her son, a pound cat named Nightmare, and a fake owl named Alan. She hates chocolate, loves vegetables, and could easily live on hamburgers for the rest of her life. She has a Bachelor’s of Architecture from North Carolina State University, is a member of SCBWI, and an alumnus of the Nevada Mentor Program. She’s represented by Danielle Chiotti, Upstart Crow Literary.

Website: amyallgeyer.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmyAllgeyerAuthor/

Twitter @amy7a

DIG TOO DEEP

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company

Release Date: April 1, 2016

ISBN-10: 0807515809

ISBN-13: 978-0807515808

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23502052-dig-too-deep

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dig-Too-Deep-Amy-Allgeyer/dp/0807515809

YA Guy Reviews... DIG TOO DEEP by Amy Allgeyer!

YA Guy recently signed up on Netgalley, and this is my first review based on a book I read via the e-ARC service: DIG TOO DEEP, Amy Allgeyer’s debut YA novel about one teen’s crusade to end mountaintop coal mining in a small Appalachian community.

When seventeen-year-old Liberty Briscoe’s mom goes to jail for an environmental protest that resulted in a bombing, Liberty moves from Washington, DC to Ebbottsville, Kentucky, to live with her maternal grandmother. There she discovers a landscape devastated by mountaintop removal coal mining, and a town too fearful of--as well as reliant on--the mine’s unscrupulous owner to question the strange orange water and mysterious illnesses that have appeared ever since the mining operation began. Liberty’s own grandmother has sickened, and while Liberty struggles to care for her granny while keeping her grades up and putting food on the table, she begins to uncover the toxic secrets the mine has tried to bury. Will she follow in the footsteps of her mother, a woman so busy defending the lives of strangers she never had time for her own daughter? Or will Liberty find ways to protect her own family while reaching out to confront the problems of the wider world?

DIG TOO DEEP is a powerful story about family, the environment, and discovering the courage to fight for what’s right. The Appalachian setting is well realized, and the growth of the main character from angry and somewhat self-centered teen to tireless advocate is exhilarating. Many themes are woven into the novel alongside the more obvious environmental ones, including the strength of mother-daughter relationships, the struggles impoverished individuals and communities face, and the value (as well as the difficulty) of discovering one’s true friends. I was particularly moved by Liberty’s tender relationship with her granny, and I was impressed by Allgeyer’s avoidance of bathos or preachiness in a story that could easily have given way to either.

If I have one reservation about the book, it’s that the resolution was a bit too neat; powerful industrialists such as the mine owner in this story seldom leave so much incriminating evidence in such obvious places. (I wish they did; there’d be a lot fewer of them out there wrecking the environment.) But that’s partly a factor of the book being YA, a genre that tends to simplify complex political issues in the interest of a satisfying resolution, and it doesn’t detract from the story’s many strengths.

DIG TOO DEEP comes out on April 1, 2016. With any luck, I’ll be able to post an interview with the author on the blog around that time. Meanwhile, I’m recommending that you all run out and dig up a copy!

YA Guy Hosts... Laura Lee Anderson, author of SONG OF SUMMER!

Pittsburgh is home to lots of great kidlit authors, and one of the newest is Laura Lee Anderson, whose YA debut, SONG OF SUMMER, releases as an e-book today! Let's hear from Laura as she tells us about her book and about one of the main characters, whose deafness plays a key role in the story!

The thirteen qualities of Robin’s Perfect Man range from the mildly important “Handsome” to the all-important “Great taste in music.” After all, Westfield’s best high school folk musician can’t go out with some shmuck who only listens to top 40 crap. When hot Carter Paulson walks in the door of Robin’s diner, it looks like the list may have come to life. It’s not until the end of the meal that she realizes he’s profoundly deaf. Carter isn’t looking for a girlfriend. Especially not a hearing one. Not that he has anything against hearing girls, they just don’t speak the same language. But when the cute waitress at Grape Country Dairy makes an effort to talk with him, he takes her out on his yellow Ducati motorcycle. Music, language, and culture sing back-up as love takes the melody, but just how long can a summer song last?

From the first moments that I envisioned Song of Summer, I knew that I wanted it to be in dual point of view- from Robin's perspective as well as from Carter's perspective. Which meant I had to do a LOT of research. I'm not deaf, I didn't have any deaf friends, and it had been a long time since third grade, when I taught myself the ASL alphabet so I could communicate with my best friend during Library class. Here are some things I learned about deaf culture while I was researching Song of Summer:

1) Sign language cannot be written. Like, it CANNOT be written. It is a visual language. Direct word-for-word translations are incorrect because facial expressions and body language are SO important! All of Carter's (and his family's) signed sentences are translated into English in the books because they have to be! It's impossible to write sign!

2) People who are deaf deal with: Hearing people questioning their driving ability/right to drive, hearing people shouting at them, hearing people offering them Braille menus, hearing people staring at them, hearing people showing them the one (rude) sign that they know... the list goes on. I tried to incorporate these into the book to educate hearing people on all the crap that people who are deaf go through! Go here to see more! (warning: swearing in video)

3) There are different stages and types of deafness. Most people who are deaf have some hearing available to them. The idea that people who are deaf have absolutely no hearing is usually false. Carter has next to no hearing and tells Robin that he's in the minority because of it.

4) Hearing aids are completely different from cochlear implants. So much so, that when I originally had Carter explain a cochlear implant as, "a really invasive, high-tech hearing aid," one of my friends corrected me. She told me that it would never be described as a hearing aid because the two are so different. Rather, it would be described as a "device that helps with hearing." So that's what Carter calls it in the book now! Also, cochlear implants are covered by medical insurance. Hearing aids are not usually.

I learned a lot more when I was preparing to write Song of Summer, and I am blessed to have learned a lot of it from the wonderful people at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, where I took two semesters of ASL classes and got to know some great people. One of my favorite experiences is chronicled here: When I arrived to the first class 15 minutes late and nobody was allowed to speak.

If you want to read more about Carter and his culture, go ahead and... Click here to order on Kindle from Amazon. Click here to order on Nook from Barnes and Noble. Click here to order from Kobo. Click here to order from ibooks.

Thanks, Laura! If you want to learn more about Laura and her writing, visit her website!

 

YA Guy Talks about... Faith in YA Fiction!

You might have noticed that YA Guy's been quiet recently; that's because I was on vacation with my family in Moab, Utah, right near Arches National Park. (Very similar to the landscape I imagined for SURVIVAL COLONY 9 and its sequel, by the way.) During our week-long visit, we stayed in the house where Edward Abbey wrote parts of his environmental classic DESERT SOLITAIRE. Though the temperature was in the 100s all week--hey, it's the desert, right?--it's easy to see why Abbey saw this area as a profoundly beautiful, spiritual place.

Interestingly, the two YA books I took on my trip both deal seriously with spiritual matters. That's fairly rare in YA, where faith and spirituality tend to be caricatured as oppressive adjuncts of the Regime or the Older Generation. By contrast, both Kelly Loy Gilbert's CONVICTION and Stephanie Oakes's THE SACRED LIES OF MINNOW BLY treat religious belief as complex and conflicted--capable of causing harm, to be sure, but also capable of offering redemption and grace. The books share a great deal in common: not only are both about faith and fanaticism, but both center around murder mysteries and the secrets that keep families together (and tear them apart). Perhaps most importantly, both are terrific debuts that deserve a wide readership.

CONVICTION tells the story of Braden Raynor, a top high-school pitching prospect whose father--a religious talk-show personality--is accused of killing a police officer. While his father is in jail awaiting trial, Braden's older brother Trey, long estranged from the family, comes to take care of his younger brother. Tensions mount as Braden struggles to renew his relationship with Trey, to prepare for an all-important baseball game, and to provide testimony during his father's trial--testimony that may either doom or save the man who's been both Braden's rock and his tormentor his entire life.

Gilbert is an exceptionally fine prose stylist, and her glowing sentences work perfectly for this story of people struggling to find light in the darkness of their lives. Braden and Trey are both remarkably well-rendered characters--but even more remarkably, their father, who could easily have devolved into caricature, emerges as a fully human being, at once grandiose and self-loathing, loving and manipulative, inspirational and horrifying. The enigmas of faith, the human desire to find meaning and certainty even at the greatest of costs, are played out brilliantly as the story shifts back and forth in time, giving us glimpses into Braden's troubled relationship with his father and brother. If I have any reservation about the book, it's that some of the baseball material doesn't feel quite right--the language and scenarios sound more like the work of an educated fan than of an actual player like Braden. (This wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that for Braden, faith and baseball are integrally connected.) But that's a minor complaint about a book that's otherwise so rich and rewarding.

THE SACRED LIES OF MINNOW BLY was originally scheduled for a 2014 publication, so I've been waiting for it a long time. When I heard that the story was loosely based on a Grimm fairy tale about a handless maiden, I expected the book to be fantasy--but it's not. Instead, it's a realistic story of a teenage girl, Minnow, who escapes a brutal religious cult only to find herself incarcerated in a juvenile facility after she commits a violent crime that may have been induced by her traumatic past. As with Gilbert's book, SACRED LIES moves back and forth in time as Minnow recalls her life as a cult member, her growing doubt in the cult's charismatic leader, and the loss of her hands as punishment for her disobedience. It's a chilling story, and a complex one to tell--indeed, at times the temporal shifts struck me as a bit awkward. But if more lurid and macabre than CONVICTION, the book is equally adept at exploring the paradoxes of belief; Oakes's great strength as a writer lies in getting under the skin of people who'll risk everything for their faith, even their own and their loved ones' lives. Minnow's story is heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting, and it'll keep readers up at night not only while they're reading but after they're done.

Turns out I couldn't have taken two better books along on my western pilgrimage. I look forward to more explorations of faith (and other subjects) from these talented YA writers!

YA Guy Reviews... BLUE GOLD by Elizabeth Stewart!

Elizabeth Stewart’s BLUE GOLD tells the story of three teenage girls on three continents, all of their lives connected by the "blue gold" of the title: the mineral coltan, which is used in many electronics including cell phones.

In Africa, Congolese refugee Sylvie fights to keep her family together after her father’s death, her mother’s descent into despair, and her brother’s attraction to the militias that rule the refugee camp. All are fighting to control the coltan market, and Sylvie fears that if she can’t find a way to get her family out of the country, the deadly battles will consume them.

In Asia, farm-girl Laiping moves to the big city to take a job in a cell-phone factory. At first it seems a dream come true, until the monotonous labor, arbitrary system of reward and punishment, and crackdowns on worker protests reveal the true nature of the system. With her father ailing and her options dwindling, can Laiping find a way to preserve her rights and her pride?

In North America, Vancouver teenager Fiona snaps a suggestive selfie for her boyfriend, only to discover that once the image enters cyberspace, there’s no controlling who has access to it. Fiona’s struggle to regain control of her reputation and her life will lead her in surprising directions, and force her to confront the problems faced by teenage girls beyond her relatively privileged world.

BLUE GOLD is, self-evidently, an “issue” book, one that explores the connections between the consumer lifestyle of developed nations and the poverty, violence, and abuse that exist elsewhere in the world. But though the book can be overly obvious at times, it’s never heavy-handed; the three girls’ lives emerge in vivid detail, drawing the reader into their flesh-and-blood stories. And these stories are rendered with unsparing realism; Sylvie’s rape by militia members, Laiping’s brutal treatment at the hands of her employers, and Fiona’s suffering from a single impulsive act are all handled straightforwardly and with no sugar-coating or artificial uplift. Mere survival is a triumph for these three young women, and the book never suggests that there’s an easy answer to the problems they, their sisters, or their societies face.

I was very impressed by this book, so much so I plan to read Stewart’s other novel for young adults, THE LYNCHING OF LOUIE SAM, which is based on a real-life incident involving the lynching of a Native American teen. If you like realistic stories that address issues beyond the sometimes claustrophobic world of YA, I highly recommend BLUE GOLD. And I also recommend you check out the website The Pirate Tree, a site covering social justice literature for young people, where I first learned of Stewart’s book.

YA Guy Hosts... The HOW WE FALL Book Blast!

YA Guy is thrilled to host the book blast for HOW WE FALL, the YA debut of one of my very favorite people on the web: Kate Brauning! Learn about the book, read the first chapter, and check out the huge interactive video launch party, which happens tonight!

How We Fall

Kate Brauning
Merit Press, F&W Media
Releasing November 11, 2014
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN-10: 1440581797
ISBN-13: 978-144058179

Ever since Jackie moved to her uncle's sleepy farming town, she's been flirting way too much--and with her own cousin, Marcus. Her friendship with him has turned into something she can't control, and he's the reason Jackie lost track of her best friend, Ellie, who left for...no one knows where. Now Ellie has been missing for months, and the police, fearing the worst, are searching for her body. Swamped with guilt and the knowledge that acting on her love for Marcus would tear their families apart, Jackie pushes her cousin away. The plan is to fall out of love, and, just as she hoped he would, Marcus falls for the new girl in town. But something isn't right about this stranger, and Jackie's suspicions about the new girl's secrets only drive the wedge deeper between Jackie and Marcus. Then Marcus is forced to pay the price for someone else's lies as the mystery around Ellie's disappearance starts to become horribly clear. Jackie has to face terrible choices. Can she leave her first love behind, and can she go on living with the fact that she failed her best friend?

Praise for How We Fall:

Kirkus Reviews: "Debut novelist Brauning tells a touching story of young, star-crossed lovers caught in a drama they have tried hard to avoid.... A sweetly written mix of mystery and romantic turmoil."

School Library Journal: "Heartbreaking and well-paced, this mystery novel challenges readers to look past preconceptions and get to the know characters, rather than focus on an uncomfortable taboo. Brauning's characters are well developed and their story engrossing. An intriguing thriller... this title will raise eyebrows and capture the interest of teens."

ALA Booklist: “…an unusual combination of romance and suspense…There is also something universal about Jackie’s struggles with her feelings and her desires, and readers will identify with her emotions, while going along for the plot’s ride. This quest for identity, wrapped up in an intriguing mystery, hooks from the beginning.”

How We Fall is available through:

Barnes & Noble Indie Bound Walmart.com Book-A-Million Book Depository Powell’s

Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.co.uk

All book lovers are invited to attend #YAlaunch, a giant book party for How We Fall and The Hit List on Monday, November 10th, from 6-9pm central time. Broadcast live over video, the party will allow you to see, hear, and interact with the authors. 10 YA and adult authors will be discussing everything from writing a series to how they write love interests. They’ll also be playing book games with the audience, taking questions, and giving away 100 books to guests attending online. Authors attending include NYT bestsellers Nicole Baart and Tosca Lee, Kate Brauning, Nikki Urang, Kiersi Burkhart, Bethany Robison, Alex Yuschik, Blair Thornburgh, Kelly Youngblood, and Delia Moran. It will be a fun and interactive evening for anyone who loves books and wants to spend some time with great authors. For more information and to sign up to attend, please click here. We'd love to see you there!

How We Fall chapter 1 by KateBrauning

 



Author Bio: Kate Brauning grew up in rural Missouri and fell in love with young adult books in college. She now works in publishing and pursues her lifelong dream of telling stories she'd want to read. This is her first novel. Visit her online at www.katebrauning.com or on Twitter at @KateBrauning.

YA Guy Hosts... Margo Kelly!

YA Guy's psyched to host Margo Kelly, author of the soon-to-be released WHO R U REALLY? (Official release date: 9/18.) Today on the blog, Margo shares the disturbing real-life events behind her chilling novel.

Margo Kelly’s Debut Who R U Really? was Ripped from a Real Life Event!

After her daughter narrowly survived a man she met in an online role-playing game, Kelly wrote a breathless young adult thriller with the hopes of helping others spot and unmask internet predators.

When a Nampa, Idaho, police detective said to Margo Kelly’s daughter, “It is your job to tell others—your real everyday friends that you go to school with—tell them what happened to you, so nothing like this can happen to them,” … she agreed. 

“My daughter is my hero,” Kelly said, “for being willing to share her personal choices, conversations, and feelings in order to help others, regardless of the negative judgment she might receive as a result.” Additionally, Kelly realized if she wrote a novel about her daughter’s experience, this could help more people avoid the traps of internet predators. Thus, while Who R U Really? is a work of fiction, the essence of the plot is what happened when Kelly’s daughter was nearly abducted. The fictional elements are based on what has happened to young women across the country on a too frequent basis.

“Inspired by her own daughter's terrifying story, Kelly has painted a realistic picture of how a smart girl can get caught up in something dangerous online,” said the School Library Journal. “Guaranteed to give readers goosebumps—particularly as events heat up toward the end.… A good choice for families to read together.”

Who R U Really? will be published in hardcover and e-book versions by Merit Press (F+W Media) on September 18, 2014.

More about Who R U Really?

When Thea discovers a new role-playing game online, she breaks her parents’ rules to play. And in the world of the game, Thea falls for an older boy named Kit whose smarts and savvy can’t defeat his near-suicidal despair. Soon, he’s texting her, asking her to meet him, and talking in vague ways about how they can be together forever. As much as she suspects that this is wrong, Thea is powerless to resist Kit’s allure, and hurtles toward the very fate her parents feared most. Who R U Really? will excite you and scare you, as Thea’s life spins out of control.

Enter to win the Goodreads giveaway

Buy online:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Merit Press

More about Margo Kelly

Margo Kelly is a native of the Northwest and currently resides in Idaho. A veteran public speaker, she is now actively pursuing her love of writing. Who R U Really? is her first novel. Margo welcomes the opportunities to speak to youth groups, library groups, and book clubs.

Follow her online:

Website: www.margokelly.net

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MargoKelly.author

Twitter: @MargoWKelly

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/margokelly

Scheduled Appearances:

September 26, 2014 – 5pm – Book Signing at Hastings in Meridian, Idaho

September 27, 2014 – 4pm – Book Signing at Hastings on Overland in Boise, Idaho

October 3, 2014 – 7pm – Book Launch Party at Hyde Park Books in Boise, Idaho

October 11, 2014 – 4pm – Book Signing at Barnes & Noble in Boise, Idaho

YA Guy Reveals... The Cover to Margo Kelly's WHO R U REALLY? (plus a giveaway)!

To celebrate the cover reveal for Who R U Really? Margo Kelly is giving away TWO Advance Reader Copies of the book! Visit www.margokelly.net to enter by Sunday, May 11, 2014!

WHO R U REALLY?

by Margo Kelly

Merit Press -- September 18, 2014

Description:

Thea's overprotective parents are driving her insane. They invade her privacy, ask too many questions, and restrict her online time so severely that Thea feels she has no life at all. When she discovers a new role-playing game online, Thea breaks the rules by staying up late to play. She's living a double life: on one hand, the obedient daughter; on the other, a girl slipping deeper into darkness. In the world of the game, Thea falls under the spell of Kit, an older boy whose smarts and savvy can't defeat his loneliness and near-suicidal despair. As Kit draws soft-hearted Thea into his drama, she creates a full plate of cover stories for her parents and then even her friends.

Soon, Thea is all alone in the dark world with Kit, who worries her more and more, but also seems to be the only person who really "gets" her. Is he frightening, the way he seems sometimes, or only terribly sad? Should Thea fear Kit, or pity him? And now, Kit wants to come out of the screen and bring Thea into his real-life world. As much as she suspects that this is wrong, Thea is powerless to resist Kit's allure, and hurtles toward the same dark fate her parents feared most. Ripped from a real-life story of Internet stalking, Who R U Really? will excite you and scare you, as Thea's life spins out of control.

About the Author:

Margo Kelly is a native of the Northwest and currently resides in Idaho. A veteran public speaker, Margo is now actively pursuing her love of writing. Who R U Really? is her debut novel and will be published by Merit Press in September 2014. Margo welcomes opportunities to speak to youth groups, library groups, and book clubs.

Links:

Website: www.margokelly.net

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21444891-who-r-u-really

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MargoWKelly

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MargoKelly.author

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/who-r-u-really-margo-kelly/1118847853?ean=9781440572760

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Who-R-Really-Margo-Kelly/dp/1440572763/ref=la_B00JY4LYZS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398971448&sr=1-1