INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE WRITING JULY!

Happy Thursday, my best beloveds! The Night Itself will be officially released in EXACTLY one week now and I'm getting very excited. If anyone sees the book in the wild anywhere at all, any time at all - right now, a week from now - pictures would make my life. Pictures of you guys holding the book wherever you have found, even if that's on your doorstep when the Amazon parcel arrives, would be even more amazing. I'll post them right here, with your permission. Do, please, keep your camera-phones handy :)

(ETA: Turns out that The Night Itself is available TODAY, right this minute, at a substantial discount, on both Kindle and iTunes, although I can't link to iTunes. So if you're a Kindle owner or an iPad/iPhone owner and you were going to buy it that way... go nuts).


Onto the post. I'm here today, as promised, to launch InCreWriJul - a month of unbridled creativity and joy, and possibly also groaning, head-clutching and paper-ball scrunching, but that is ALL PART OF THE FUN!

Dear Readers, in the month of July I really want us to write together.

It doesn't matter if you feel like writing poetry or short stories. Novels or synopses. Blog posts or entries on Tumblr. Just so long as you write something - anything creative - you're welcome to take part in InCreWriJul! If you want to use this as a way to help you start a novel, or finish the novel you have on deadline, that's brilliant. If you want to use it to start creative writing for the first time ever? Also fantastic!

Pick a target for yourself. Something realistic and achieveable for you, something that you can hit with a bit of effort. Nothing feels as depressing as failing right away because you pushed yourself too hard. But once you've picked that target, stick to it. Because nothing feels as good as pushing through, working hard, and reaching your goal. And when I said realistic? I meant it! If you don't think you can realistically manage to write more than five lines every day? THAT IS 100% A-OK for InCreWriJul too! On the other hand? Don't be too easy on yourself either. There's more satisfaction in going the extra mile than in never putting on your running shoes because you're afraid of blisters.

The really important thing about this is that we're going to do it together. It's supposed to be exciting, and fun, and motivating, and part of that is being around to help and support each other. Every Tuesday in July I'm going to do a check in post. I will be completely honest with you about how many words I wrote in the preceding week, if I struggled or had a great time, and how I'm feeling about my own InCreWriJul book. I might even do breakdowns as to how many words/pages I managed each day, if you're interested in that much detail.

I hope you guys will be equally honest in the comments. If you caught a cold, felt awful, and wrote two words the whole week, we'll offer encouragement and reassurance. If you blew past your target and wrote pages and pages more than you expected, you'll get high-fives and cheers.

At the end of the month, we'll all do a review and round-up of what we've accomplished. And any commentors who checked in on every single InCreWriJul Tuesday (that's five, from July 2rd, to July 30th) will be eligible to go into a giveaway draw and receive a luverly prize. I think you can probably guess, given what month we're doing this and what ELSE is happening in July (hint: Big Secret Project will have it's book birthday and finally officially hit the shelves!) what at least part of the prize will be. You want to be eligible, trust me! And this giveaway will be open to everyone, from the brilliantly coloured beatles dwelling on the hot, eastenmost rocks of Timbuktu to the tiny dwarf Artic rabbits hopping around on the snow of the polar icecap. All are welcome.

I honestly and truly loved InCreWriMa last year Dear Readers, and I hope this year will be just as motivating for me and you, and just as productive! But don't get too excited now; take some time to think about whether this seems like fun to you, and what a REALISTIC target would be. Don't rush in and commit yourself too fast. I don't want anyone to put undue pressure on themselves or to take part if it's not right for them just now. I don't want to see any comments pledging certain amounts of words per day, or anything like that, in the comments today. It's not July yet! The first check-in post will be Tuesday next week. That's when I'll tell you my target, talk a bit about what I'm working on (not that it'll be a big shock) and ask for your details too.


Yay? Yay?! YAY!

DARKNESS HIDDEN EDITS: DONE!

Hello, hello, hello my duckies! Welcome to Tuesday and a veritable banquet (buffet style) of lovely things.

So, as the blog title kind of spoils... I finished the edits on DARKNESS HIDDEN!

WHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!

I'd given myself a deadline to try and send the edited manuscript out to both Super Agent and Wonder Editor before the end of the day on Friday, which was really tough because I was also looking after my father that day. But I worked like a crazed little beaver chipping away at a log, and managed to press 'Send' on the email before four o'clock. Only to get Out of Office autoreplies from both editor and agent. *Sigh*

This is an inevitable result of self-imposed deadlines, my muffins. It happens every time. Make a note for your future careers. EVERY. TIME.

However, I feel very positive about this latest set of revisions. The book actually has a new ending now - well, the same one, but vastly extended because the original version was really abrupt. I was so emotional when I wrote the ending initially that I honestly couldn't see what to do but to just end it there. Anything else was going to feel like anti-climax to me at that point. But luckily, that is what revisions are for, and because I know people have complained in the past that my endings are abrupt, I was really determined to keep thinking about it until something occurred to me - which it did, while I was on a train journey the other week. Good old trains. They're great for my creativity, even if they do regularly get cancelled on me, buried under landslides, delayed because of snow drifts... Anyway! During these revisions I cut over 10,000 words, but the manuscript eventually ended up about 7,000 words longer overall, which I like because usually when I start adding length during a revision, that's a sign I'm on the right track.

Of course, finishing the revisions on DH and getting that ending right, finally - we hope - filled me with enthusiasm for starting work on book #3 of the trilogy (I nearly gave the game away by typing the title there! Phew). I've tried to begin the third book several times but I kept getting stuck because I couldn't get a clear picture in my head of where Mio, the main character, would be emotionally after the events that finish DH. The new ending really helped me get there, and I wrote some rough notes on Saturday which translated into eleven pages of new stuff this morning. Hurrah!

Now onto other lovely things! First, an exciting announcement. I'm going to be in anthology. Here's the announcement in Publisher's Weekly. For those who don't want to click away, a screencap:

My very first! I'm really psyched to have been asked. There's a lot of exciting authors in there! Although the deal has been made, I'm waiting to get more details from the editor - Ann Angel - about what sort of content will be allowed before I can know for certain what short story I will write. However, at this point I'm leaning very heavily toward one that I know many of you will like: it concerns a character from Shadows on the Moon that a lot of people have asked to know more about :)

Next! Last week Luna of Luna's Little Library wrote the most lovely review of The Night Itself and gave it a Sunshine Star rating. Which was already extremely wonderful - but then she made this fanart:

Jack and Hikaru! So adorable, I did a little dance. My babies! My messed up, emotionally-constipated babies!

Finally, here's a mini-interview that I did with the lovely author Kate Ormand (one of my fellow Author Allsorts) for her SNEAK PEAK feature. There's some inside information on the book AND a brand-new snippet for you. What more could you want?

That's all for today, so I'll see you on Thursday, when I will be talking about (drumroll please) InCreWriJul!

THE NAME OF THE BLADE BOOK #2 TITLE!

Happy Thursday, Dear Readers! Today marks just FOURTEEN DAYS until the release date of The Night Itself and, as promised, I shall be making the long-teased announcement of the title of the second book in The Name of the Blade trilogy.

But first! Some blatant waffle. I know that most of you are going to literally scroll straight through the next several paragraphs as if they don't exist, but I'm going to go ahead and write them anyway because it just doesn't feel like a proper post otherwise. And maybe some of you will come back and enjoy this afterwards. Just to let you know I'm serious, I'll let you in on a spoiler right now: the initials of the book are D. H. That ought to hold you for a bit.

So, when the idea for Big Secret Project aka The Katana Trilogy aka The Name of the Blade first blew into my head like a giant, flaming comet of inspiration and I thought 'Wow, this is amazing but it's like... three book's worth, oh cr*p, how do you write three books?', I instantly started worrying about titles. Just in case I haven't mentioned it before: I agonise about titles. I have to have the right title. I'm not the grown-up, logical kind of writer who can just get on with it while their manuscript is saved as UNTITLEDUF#ONE or UNCONTRACTEDBOOK or something. No. Somehow I can never quite get into my stride with a book until I know what it's going to be called. It's like that gives me a hook to hang all the themes and imagery on so I can figure out how I'm going to weave them into the plot, setting and characterisation. Which may sound a bit odd but... bear with me, because this isn't the point.

Given that I'm a giant ball of stress over titling any standalone novel, and given that Big Secret Project was already showing every sign of turning into one of those 'book of my heart' type dealies (otherwise known as a sparkly-unicorn-rainbow-angel-cupcake-baby project) and given that I now knew I had to come up with not one but THREE amazing titles, you can just imagine how many long walks I dragged Finn on while muttering under my breath, trying to figure it out. I thought this process was going to suck.

But lo! About a week after the image of tentacles of unspeakable darkness slowly unfolding against a shining night skyline of glass and steel slam-dunked me in the skull, the answer to my title questions slam-dunked me nearly as hard. Like magic. It came to me as a haiku that summed up the major theme of the story that I wanted to tell, and which I also realised would make a marvellous plot point near the end of the very last book. Each line of the haiku contained one perfect phrase that perfectly encapsulated the events of one book in the trilogy. It felt (and still feels, to this day) like the Muse got so annoyed with my internal flailings that she just wrote the haiku down for me on a scrap of paper, wrapped the paper around half a brick, and lobbed the brick directly into my brain.

You already know that the first line of the haiku contained the phrase 'The night itself' because that is the title of the first book. However, today is not the day when I shall reveal the whole haiku or its place in the story. Today is not the day when I shall reveal the title of book #3 (which is my favourite of all three, by a narrow margin). But today IS the day when I will finally tell you the title of the book I'm editing right now, the immediate follow-up to The Night Itself (which is out in just fourteen days!).

Back to those initials: D. H.

What do they stand for, my pretties?

Delightful Herrings?

Downwind, Horace?

Don't! Hallitosis!?

Dumbledore's Hatstand?

Nope.

The title of Book #2 of The Name of the Blade is...

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DARKNESS HIDDEN

*Crashes of Lightning* *Distant Screams* *Ominous Rattlings*

There. What do you think about this, guys? Let me know in the comments :)

A PLETHORA OF PRETTIES

Hello, my dearest ducky darlings! Welcome back to the blog after my week-and-a-bit's-hiatus. Today I have for you a veritable FEAST of linkity and updates, so hold onto your hats.

First of all! It is now less than a month until the UK release of The Night Itself, and Lovely Lass' secret project (and all her plotting and planning) has finally come to fruition in the book trailer! Which isn't actually a traditional book trailer at all - it's a reading of an extract of the book, in which many, many charming blogger pals took part (and Lovely Lass too!) Here it is:


Mushy kisses and snuggles for everyone who donated their time and their performances to this. What do you think, guys? Does it whet your appetite? Likes and comments on the YouTube page are very much appreciated.

If that's not enough to get you exited, perhaps THIS will be!

 

Yes. Yes, that is the very first, hot off the presses, FINISHED COPY of The Night Itself. Thank you for asking. Guys, guys, you guys, I cannot express how beautimous this is in real life. It is exquisite. The pink absolutely GLOWS. My camera makes it look sort of purple-ish here, but this is true hot-pink and it's gorgeous. It's so gorgeous that Wonder Editor and Delightful Designer knocked this up for the Walker Books Inkslingers blog:

These people are hilarous. Best. Publisher. Ever.

The cover is SUEDE feel, all soft and buttery. I must confess to borderline inappropriate stroking. There are so many wonderful details. Like the praise for page: 

Never had one of these before! Look at all the pretty authors!

The spine! The spine! *Swoons*

Title page! Look at all the books I've written. Holy cr*p!

Chapter One - with added badass katana

The stunning back cover, with quote from L.A. Weatherly!

Which brings me to the next point: within this finished copy of The Night Itself, the name of book #2 of the trilogy is revealed. I think I've mentioned before that book #2 and #3 already have titles - the titles were actually one of the first things that I knew about all three books. I've just been keeping them secret because it's more fun for me that way. But since the title of the second book will soon be out there, I've decided to reveal it myself... on Thursday. I feel that the reveal deserves a post all of it's own (especially since I'm completely immersed in edits for this very book at the moment and it all feels like life-or-death to me). So stay tuned for that.

Other stuff!

If you'd like to check out some early reviews and read an exclusive extract of The Night Itself for yourself, you can find both on LoveReading4Kids. You do have to register with them to get access to the extract (which I know is annoying) but the Walker Books entry for TNI, where there would normally be an extract that you could access without registering, seems to be broken at the moment, so this is the best I can do. Plus, the teen reviews are glorious.

Next, here is a link to a really different interview that I did for The Madeleine Project. The questions are based on psychology and make for a fascinating result.

Finally, a result that popped up in my Google Alerts showed me an amazing unofficial redesign of the Shadows on the Moon cover by a very talented artist. I only wish that I could have this cover for real. Purple! Lightning! Knives! Shoji-screen silhouettes

Read you on Thursday, awesome nerds.

THE FINAL MEGA EXCLUSIVE THE NIGHT ITSELF GIVEAWAY: WINNER!

Hello, Dear and adorable Readers! No, your eyes do not deceive you - I *am* posting a day early today. This is because I'm going to be travelling for a chunk of this week, and also because I'm about to put the blog on hiatus for a little while. Don't panic - I'm only talking the rest of this week and then next week. I'll be back on the 18th of June. I'm hoping to make some really good headway on a new set of edits for The Name of the Blade book #2 during that period, so send me good thoughts.

In the meantime! Here's an article on my love of geeks which I wrote for the delightful SisterSpooky's Geek Week. Check it out - I'm giving hinty hints about The Night Itself which you may enjoy. I also wrote a post on Jack, the lesbian character in The Night Itself, for The Gay YA blog, in which I talk about you guys and how you helped me to decide how Jack should be written. That'll be up sometime today, so if you don't see it right now just check back later.

And now onto the most important part of this blog! It's time to pick the winner for the very last Mega Exclusive The Night Itself Giveaway, who will recieve all of this:

• A glossy full-colour The Night Itself Poster
• A spiral bound, lined, The Night Itself notebook
• The Night Itself fridge magnets/bookmarks
• Double-sided The Night Itself postcard/bookmarks
• AN ADVANCED READER'S PROOF COPY OF THE NIGHT ITSELF

These will be sent directly by Lovely Lass from Walker Books London offices. And in addition, I will be sending the winner a signed copy of any one of my published books (they get to pick), a hardback copy of Amy McCulloch's The Oathbreaker's Shadow and a paperback copy of Emma Pass' ACID, plus a fistful of other swag. I said MEGA giveaway, and mega I meant.

So! Who out of all the plucky entrants will win today's feast of awesome? Let's ask Random Number Org, shall we?

Entry number 7 wins the day! And that just happens to be...

***DRUMROLL***

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***LUNA'S LITTLE LIBRARY!***

Congratulations, Luna! Drop me a line at z d marriott (AT) g mail (DOT) com and let me know the postal address where you would like your haul delivered, and also which book you'd like me to sign for you. 

To everyone else who entered this giveaway - and each of the others - helping to spread the buzz and be part of my excitement about this book, thank you. I've appreciated everything that you've done so much, especially the gorgeous fanart, which sincerely moved and humbled me. Not everyone could win, and I'm sorry that some of you are probably feeling a bit let down right now. But don't worry. There will be more giveaways (there are always more giveaways on this blog) and there will be more chances to win. And The Night Itself will be out in just one month now, so you'll be able to get your hands on it, one way or another, mind-blowingly soon :)

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, read good books, listen to good music, and be happy. I'll see you the week after next!

Zxx

RETROTHURSDAY: TEENAGE SUPERHERO

Hello and happy Thursday, my ducky-darlings! Before we get to today's post - imported at great cost and terrible peril from the dark swampy depths of the blog archive - I have links to share to two new advanced reviews of The Night Itself, both of which are just lovely. 

The first is on Readaraptor's blog, by the adorable Raimy, and the second is by the charming Jesse on Books4Teens. You should check out their blogs even if you are not remotely interested in my book, because they rock and their blogs rock. Thank you both so much, guys!

Now, just a bit of background on today's RetroPost. It begins with a lengthy preamble about YA Highway's Roadtrip Wednesday, which obviously is now very, very (two years) out of date. But I decided to leave it in because it's part of explaining how my brain got onto this topic in the first place. Just don't expect to see any of the topics mentioned here on the YA Highway blog now, OK? They are long gone. So, without further ado...

RetroThursday: TEENAGE SUPERHERO

 

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic. We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link in the comments - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments.

ETA: Turns out that YA Highway changed the topic for this week to 'Your favourite First Lines' after I had already written this post, meaning that once again I am unable to participate. This is what happens when I try to join in, people. It never ends well. But I thought I'd post what I wrote anyway, because it's heartfelt and it took a lot of effort to get it all down.

I've been wanting to take part in Road Trip Wednesday for ages now, but I always forgot or had something else important to post. So I was thrilled when the stars aligned this week and I not only remembered to check the YA Highway blog in time, but had nothing planned for Wednesday's post.

And then I saw the topic. 

Who did you want to be like in High School?

Brain freeze. Because here's the thing. When I was in school I wanted to be like:

 

Buffy Summers. Beautiful, brave, resourceful and strong. Surrounded by great friends. Willing to sacrifice her life for the good of others.

Elizabeth Bennett. Highly intelligent, quick-witted and funny, but also doing her best to live to strict principles of integrity, even when her own family were pushing her to make bad choices.

Daine from Tamora Pierce's The Immortals Quartet. Tough and competent, with hidden and still developing talents and a completely no-nonsense attitude.

But since I have a feeling this topic is related to the upcoming book Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard, that means the topic is actually asking, what REAL person did you want to be like in school?

Tricky. You see, I was not and never have been a 'follower'. Most of the girls I went to school with bent themselves into strange and awkward shapes, trying to make sure that they fitted in with everyone else. They all had to wear their hair a certain way - permed and scrunched, with at least one large, teased quiff at the front - dress a certain way - tight trousers, top with a certain label, a particular kind of shoes and bag - speak a certain way - lots of swearing, lots of scornful phrases, all topped off with a certain regional accent.

Of course, the less popular ones came off as a sort of cheap imitation of the really popular crowd, but that was okay, because by showing that they were willing to follow, they gained a kind of protection. Even the girls that I was friends with - the ones I knew were clever and funny and interesting people with their own unique traits - were desperately trying to suppress anything different about themselves so they could follow along in the popular kids footsteps. 

Don't stand out. Don't do anything different. Don't put your hand up in lessons. Don't smile at teachers. If you get a good mark, don't look pleased about it. For crying out loud, don't let on that you actually READ for fun.

These were the rules, and I broke all of them. I refused to pretend to be anything I wasn't, I refused to pretend to be stupid, and I emphatically refused to perm and scrunch my hair. No way. In fact, the more the other kids my age lectured me, made fun of me and picked on me, the more stubbornly I clung to being different.

That had consequences. Consequences which in some cases skated dangerously close to being life-threatening (like being pushed down stairs, having stones thrown at me, having my head repeatedly hit against a concrete wall) but which were always unpleasant (having ink flicked at my back, being spat at, having dozens of tiny balls of chewing gum thrown at my head so that I had to pull handfuls of my own hair out).

One by one I watched all my friends give in to the pressure. None of them defended me against the attacks - verbal or physical - because doing so would have put them in the line of fire. What's more, as time went on, they got angry with me for being the way I was. It was my own fault people bullied me, they said. Why did I have to be so different? Why couldn't I just fit in? In squashing themselves into the box that the other kids had told them they needed to fit, my friends had lost their bravery and compassion. All they gained was a craven desire not to stand out.

So school was a pretty damn lonely place for me. And the hardest part was knowing that with a few tweaks, a few changes, a few things that seemed so small, I could have turned it around. I was smart, and I could have done a really good impression of one of those cool girls - talked the way they did, acted the way they did. I was quite capable of fixing my hair to look as hideous as theirs did. I could stop putting my hand up in class, hide my books. And, just like had happened to my friends, within a short time the worst of the bullying would have stopped. I'd never have been in the popular crowd, but I wouldn't have been defying them anymore. They'd have lost interest.

Looking back, to be honest I'm stunned at the absolute core of steel I must have had as a teen. I remember so many days when I got home and went straight to my room to cry for hours over things that had been done to me at school. I remember broken glasses and bruises, I remember taunting words that used to echo in my head for hours. But I never let the other kids see me cry. I remember hearing someone say: 'She's too stuck up to feel pain'. Well, I wasn't. But I was too proud to ever let them see me feeling it. I was too proud to give in. And I was too proud to change.

For a long time after leaving school, I didn't like to think about it. I tried to block all the memories out. When random images of school days swam into my head, I'd take deep breaths, or hum under my breath, or flick the inside of my wrist, to try and drive them away. But as I've gotten a little older, I've started to realise something about the whole experience. Yes, it was dark, and scary and lonely. Yes, no one should ever have to go through what I did. But I didn't do anything wrong. The fault lay with the other children, and the teachers and parents who let them get away with acting like they did.

Teenage Zolah? She was AWESOME.

I truly don't know if I could find that kind of inner strength now. I don't know, if I was subjected to that kind of daily, constant harassment, the threat of violence, the verbal abuse, if I could stand up to my tormenters. I don't know if I'd last a week, let alone five years. But somehow that girl - that teenage girl between the ages of eleven and sixteen - managed it. She did something that most adults couldn't do without breaking down. She endured. She went back to that school day after day. And in the end she WON.

So. The reason this topic is tricky for me to answer, is that the person I wanted to be like in school?

Was me.

And if anyone out there right now, reading this blog, is going through something like Teenage Zolah did, back in the day? Just take a moment to realise how amazing you - like Teenage Zolah - really are.

You are a superhero. And you don't have to be like anyone but you.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS BY CRISTIN TERRILL: A REVIEW

Hi everyone! I hope you enjoyed what was, for me, a gloriously sunny bank holiday weekend. If it wasn't a bank holiday, or sunny, where you were, I hope you managed to enjoy yourself anyway.

Today I bring you a review of a fantastic debut (I can't believe this is a first novel, guys) by Cristin Terrill, called ALL OUR YESTERDAYS.

UK Cover from Bloomsbury

 The Blurb

"You have to kill him." 

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain.

Only Em can complete the final instruction. She’s tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present—imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside.

Marina has loved her best friend James since the day he moved next door when they were children. A gorgeous, introverted science prodigy from one of America’s most famous families, James finally seems to be seeing Marina in a new way, too. But on one disastrous night, James’s life crumbles apart, and with it, Marina’s hopes for their future. Now someone is trying to kill him. Marina will protect James, no matter what. Even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it. At least not as the girl she once was.

All Our Yesterdays is a wrenching, brilliantly plotted story of fierce love, unthinkable sacrifice, and the infinite implications of our every choice.

 The Review

As soon as I saw the synopsis for this book up on NetGalley I just *had* to have it. It immediately reminded me of an Australian drama series that I was hooked on as a young teen, The Girl From Tomorrow (although the stories are actually very different). I'll always remember how that show thoughtfully illustrated chaos theory and the nature of paradoxes. Paradoxes, and the various ways they can play out, fascinate me; I love time travel stories, because when they're done well they have a dense complexity to them which is hard to achieve in any other kind of fiction. ALL OUR YESTERDAYS is a very, very well done time travel story. 

Sixteen year old Marina is a poor little rich girl who has everything materially and yet longs for the basics most kids take for granted - like parents who care about her instead of using her as prop for their shallow, social-climbing lives. Constant emotional neglect has instilled a deep sense of self-loathing in her. She has a couple of girl-friends whom she strongly suspects only want to be around her because of her family's wealth, and whom she puts up with even though they don't seem to have her best interests at heart. She expects nothing better. The only person who makes her feel good about herself is her best friend James. James is rich, handsome and brilliant. He's the same age as Marina, but doesn't spend as much time with her as he used to, because he graduated high school at thirteen and went straight onto advanced studies at university. 

James lost both his parents to an accident at a young age and was left deeply traumatised. His beloved older brother, Nate, a rising young congressmen, is his guardian. Despite being socially awkward and absorbed to the point of obsession with his cutting edge work in physics, James is a good friend to Marina, and in return Marina loves him with the kind of single-minded, ruthless devotion which can only come from a place of complete loneliness. 

Marina responds to the advent of a new friend - Finn - into James' life just as you might expect; with jealousy and resentment. She sees Finn as an obstacle in the way of her ultimate goal, which is to get James to love her back so that he'll never leave her. Finn seems boundlessly self-confident, and his humour and laidback relationship with James set Marina completely on edge. She's sure that he's mocking her and messing with her on purpose. But Finn's life, family, and motivations are a mystery to Marina, and even to James.

Just as Marina is scrunching up her courage to confess her feelings to James, terrible events overtake the mismatched trio. They and the people most important to them come under attack, and all sense of safety shatters. Desperate to understand who is after them and why, they embark on a journey which will force them to question not only their relationships with each other and their assumptions about their world, but the nature of their own souls.

Meanwhile, years in the future, a pair of captured freedom fighters suffer brutal torture at the hands of a pair of men they call the Doctor and the Director. They are completely at the mercy of the totallitarian regime which has taken control of America, and plunged the entire world into war. Starved, sleep-deprived, beaten and interogated on a regular basis, the only comfort they have in their bare cells is each other's voices through the wall, and the knowledge that they haven't given up the location of the vital piece of paper which is the only reason they are still alive.

In the midst of this nightmare ordeal, they discover a list - a list left for them by a past version of themselves. The writing makes it clear that if they can break out, they will have the chance to go back and change the past in order to save themselves and the world from this terrible outcome. In fact, the list shows them that many different past versions of them have already attempted to do so, trying multiple stategies to attempt to prevent the construction of Cassandra, a giantic neutron collider which makes time travel possible and which has resulted in the horror they are now experiencing. Each strategy, from the simple to the extreme, has failed. The list tells them that there is only one possible thing left to do.

They have to kill someone.

Someone they knew and loved in their former lives, before everything went so terribly wrong and their world imploded. Someone whom they know their past selves will die to protect.

The premise of this book is spine-tingling - but that isn't all it has to offer. It's very well written, with vivid, believable dialogue and a fantastic sense of pace. The characters of Marina, Finn, James and future Em and Finn are wonderfully complex and real, characterised with a light touch that reveals them gradually through their actions as the story progresses. And in particular, I found Em's love and tenderness towards the past version of herself incredibly moving. It's so common to see modest - ie. self hating - heroines who 'don't know they're beautiful/special/smart/worthy of love' portrayed as positive in YA. It's joyous to read about a character whose journey, even in the midst of near-apocalypic events, is ultimately one to self-acceptance and self-respect.

The narrative is complicated but cleverly structured, flashing backward and forward between the actions of bleak, determined future Em and Finn and the struggling, immature present Finn, James and Marina, and then back further still, to other significant events that tie the two realities together. It felt like a series of Russian dolls, secrets nestling within each one so that every time you thought all had been revealed, the story would turn again. Marina and Em had subtly distinct voices, but they were similar enough that whether I was reading about the story's 'present' or 'past' or 'future', eveything felt seamless.

I have to admit that at the end of the story I was left with a few queries about how certain paradoxes resolved themselves. The idea that space-time has a kind of sentience, and attempts to mend rifts in its own fabric, was mentioned a couple of times, but I'm still not sure why some events 'rewound' themselves and others stuck. I think that future re-readings of this book would definitely repay me with a deeper understanding of how time travel in this universe worked. But all this aside, the ending was both bittersweet and deeply satisfying.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS is an action packed and profoundly emotional first novel, written with skill and self-assurance which have made Cristin Terrill an auto-buy author for me from now on. I can't wait for it to be available in hard copy here in the UK (August the first!). Highly recommended.