Life Actually Tour – May-June, 2013!

One of my very favorite things about being a writer is getting to meet and participate in events with lots of different writers!  This month, I’m lucky enough to be participating in Random House’s Life Actually Tour with Lurlene McDaniel, Elizabeth LaBan, Anna Jarzab and more!

 
Below are the events I’ll be participating in, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg for this amazing tour, celebrating realistic fiction and the release of Lurlene McDaniel's new book, The Year of Luminous Love.  Check out the full list of events at LifeActuallyTour.com.
 
Hope to see you soon!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Bethesda Library

7400 Arlington Rd, Bethesda, MD 20814

with Lurlene McDaniel and Elizabeth LaBan

5pm
 

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Barnes & Noble Annapolis

2516 Solomons Island Rd, Annapolis, MD 21401

with Lurlene McDaniel, Beth Bauman, and Elizabeth LaBan

6pm
 

Friday, May 17, 2013

Barnes & Noble Union Square

Union Square, 33 E 17th St, New York, NY 10003

with Lurlene McDaniel, Elizabeth LaBan, Shawn Goodman, and Anna Jarzab

7pm

The Stone Girl - On Sale August 28th and Events!

My third novel, The Stone Girl, is on sale TODAY, August 28^th!

Below are all the details for my upcoming events, together with some of my favorite young-adult authors. 

And, for those of you who like to plan ahead of time, I’ll be visiting RandomBuzzers.com starting November 12, 2012!

Hope to see you – and hear from you – soon!
 

Alyssa’s Events

Friday, September 14, 2012 (with Adele Griffin, Deborah Heiligman, and David Levithan)

Barnes & Noble

3535 US Route #1

Princeton, NJ

7pm

 

Wednesday, October 3, 2012 (Teen Author Reading Night)

Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library

(Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street)

New York, NY

6pm

Featuring:

Jocelyn Davies

Jeff Hirsch

Aaron Karo

Eugene Myers

Alyssa Sheinmel

Suzanne Weyn

 

Sunday, October 7, 2012 (with Adele Griffin, Theo Lawrence, David Levithan, and Eliot Schrefer)

Oblong Books

6422 Montgomery St.

Rhinebeck, NY

4pm

 

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 (with Adele Griffin, David Levithan, Eliot Schrefer, and Robin Wasserman)

Powerhouse Arena

37 Main Street

Brooklyn, NY

6pm

The Stone Girl – Blog Tour and More!

The blog tour for The Stone Girl is kicking off tomorrow, which means that the book will be on sale in less than a month.  It’s still surprising to me that this novel is really being published.  Writing The Stone Girl, I thought that maybe this book was just for me.  I didn’t think anyone would want to read or publish it.  Maybe I was just getting it out of my system, this eating disorder book that I just had to write, and once I finished telling Sethie’s story, I could go back to writing something better, something people might actually want to read.

I never wanted to write a book about eating disorders, but I guess I always knew I would, since there was a time when they were a big part of my own life.  But I certainly didn’t think there was anything to say about eating disorders that hadn’t already been said in the books I’d read for as long as I could remember: The Best Little Girl in the World, Stick Figure, Fasting Girls, Hunger Pains, and more recently Unbearable Lightness and Wintergirls, to name just a few.  I couldn’t tell you exactly when I started reading these books, only that I read more and more as my own body-obsession intensified.  I read Marya Hornbacher’s haunting memoir Wasted so many times that there are lines I can still, today, recite verbatim.  There was a time in my life when I wanted to have an eating disorder: I wanted to be skinny and an eating disorder seemed like the only way.  I loved eating disorders so much that I even wrote my senior thesis about them.  In a way, I’d been researching The Stone Girl since long before I knew I would write it.

The Stone Girl is not, I know, a traditional story about eating disorders.  Sethie’s is hardly a typical case, though maybe there isn’t really such thing as a typical case with such personal diseases.  Sethie is the girl who, at least initially, skates on the precipice of her disorder, not quite diving in.  She is the girl who will never say she has an eating disorder because she’s too ashamed – not ashamed because she is sick, but ashamed because she’s not sick enough to deserve the title.

Eating disorders are, of course, a very sensitive topic.  They affect everyone so differently, so personally, that I know there are as many people who will not relate to Sethie as there are people who will.  Some people won’t like the way I’ve portrayed her; some people might not believe she could be real.  Some people might simply read the story for the story's sake, a tale of one girl's experiences.  But some people might recognize themselves, their friends, their classmates in her; maybe they will recognize someone in their lives who needs help. 

And maybe, just maybe, those people will begin to talk; maybe a conversation will begin and take on a life of its own.  When I was in the throes of my body-obsession, I always wanted to talk about food – how could I help myself, I was so hungry!  But I didn’t want to talk about whether you thought I was sick or not.  I didn’t want you to offer me advice, because I knew that no matter what you said to me, you’d be wrong.  You couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to be trapped in my body.  You couldn’t possibly be interested in hearing just how fat I felt.

Today, I wonder if I might have made it to the other side sooner if I’d allowed myself to talk about it, if I’d had people around me who talked to me about it.  Maybe they would have understood.  Maybe they would have known what it was like.  And most of all, maybe they would have helped. 

I had many reasons for writing The Stone Girl, but I like to think that if it reaches the right audience – reaches the right girl – it might spark some conversations.  A blog tour is a one way to start a discussion, and I hope you will follow mine.  Details are below!

The Stone Girl Blog Tour

Thursday, August 2: Emily’s Crammed Bookshelf
Friday, August 3: Literary Rambles
Monday, August 6: YA Romantics
Tuesday, August 7: The Book Addict’s Guide
Wednesday, August 8: Book Club Chic
Thursday, August 9: A Tale of Two Bookies
Sunday, August 12: The Teen Book Guru
Monday, August 13: The Teen Book Guru
Tuesday, August 14: Itching for Books
Wednesday, August 15: Random Acts of Reading
Thursday, August 16: The Children’s Book Review
Friday, August 17: Isabel Bandeira
Monday, August 20: YA Romantics
Tuesday, August 21: Taking It One Book at a Time
Wednesday, August 22: Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers
Thursday, August 23: Confessions of a Bookaholic
Friday, August 24: The Compulsive Reader
Monday, August 27: Almost Grown Up
Monday, August 27: A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
Tuesday, August 28: A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
Tuesday, August 28: Letter Blocks
Saturday, September 1: Distraction No. 99
Sunday, September 2: Literary Escapism
Monday, September 3: Dear Teen Me

2012 Teen Author Festival March 14-20!

The annual Teen Author Festival is here yet again!

Below is the list of events in which I’m participating, including my very first chance to read from The Stone Girl on March 31st at the New York Public Library.
Hope to see you there!

Teen Author Symposium

Saturday, March 31st 1pm-5pm

South Court, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street

1pm: Introduction

1:10-2pm: Rising to the Challenge: YA Characters Facing Down What Life Throws Them

Tara Altebrando

Matt Blackstone

Susane Colasanti

Kody Keplinger

Siobhan Vivian

K.M. Walton

moderator: David Levithan

2-2:50pm: Killer Instincts: Death, Murder, and the YA Novel

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Gina Damico

Kim Harrington

Barry Lyga

moderator: Marie Rutkoski

2:50-4pm: Moments of Truth: Characters at a Crossroads

Natasha Friend

Margie Gelbwasser

Jennifer Hubbard

Stewart Lewis

Sarah Darer Littman

Jess Rothenberg

Daisy Whitney

moderator: E. Lockhart

4-5pm: Looking Forward to Fall

David Levithan

Marie Rutkoski

Eliot Schrefer

Alyssa Sheinmel

Book Signing

Sunday April 1, 1pm-4pm

Books of Wonder, 18 West 18th Street (between 5th and 6th)

1-1:45pm:

Jennifer Barnes (Every Other Day, Egmont)

Matt Blackstone (A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie, FSG)

Caroline Bock (LIE, St. Martin’s)

Jen Calonita (Belles, Little Brown)

Anna Carey (Eve, Harper)

Susane Colasanti (So Much Closer, Penguin)

Andrea Cremer (Bloodrose, Penguin)

Gina Damico (Croak, HMH)

Emily Danforth (The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Harper)

Jocelyn Davies (A Beautiful Dark, Harper)

Sarah Beth Durst (Drink, Slay, Love, S&S)

Elizabeth Eulberg (Take a Bow, Scholastic)

Gayle Forman (Where She Went, Penguin)

Natasha Friend (For Keeps, Penguin)

Kim Harrington (Perception, Scholastic)

Barry Lyga (I Hunt Killers, Little Brown)

Daisy Whitney (The Rivals, Little Brown)

1:45-2:30pm:

Margie Gelbwasser (Pieces of Us, Flux)

Alissa Grosso (Popular, Flux)

Jenny Han (We’ll Always Have Summer, S&S)

Leanna Renee Hieber (Darker Still, Sourcebooks)

Anne Heltzel (Circle Nine, Candlewick)

Jeff Hirsch (The Eleventh Plague, Scholastic)

Jennifer Hubbard (Try Not to Breathe, Penguin)

Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of True or Dare, Penguin)

PG Kain (Famous for Thirty Seconds, S&S)

Melissa Kantor (The Darlings in Love, Hyperion)

Kody Keplinger (Shut Out, Little Brown)

Lucas Klauss (Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, S&S)

David Levithan (Every You, Every Me, RH)

Stewart Lewis (You Have Seven Messages, RH)

Sarah Darer Littman (Want to Go Private?, Scholastic)

Elisa Ludwig (Pretty Crooked, S&S)

2:30-3:15pm:

Carolyn Mackler (The Future of Us, Penguin)

Andy Marino (Unison Spark, FSG)

Wendy Mass (13 Gifts, Scholastic)

Terra Elan McVoy (The Summer of Firsts and Lasts, S&S)

Lauren McLaughlin (Scored, RH)

Sarah Mlynowski (Ten Things We Did, RH)

Carley Moore (The Stalker Chronicles, FSG)

E. C. Myers (Fair Coin, Pyr)

Michael Northrop (Plunked, Scholastic)

Micol Ostow (What Would My Cell Phone Do?, Penguin)

Stephanie Perkins (Lola and the Boy Next Door, Penguin)

Jessica Rotherberg (The Catastrophic History of You and Me, Penguin)

Marie Rutkoski (The Jewel of the Kalderash, FSG)

Erin Saldin (The Girls of No Return, Scholastic)

Leila Sales (Past Perfect, S&S)

Kieran Scott (He’s So Not Worth It, S&S)

3:15-4pm:

Melissa De La Cruz (Lost in Time, Hyperion)

Alyssa Sheinmel (The Lucky Kind, RH)

Jennifer Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, Little Brown)

Jeri Smith-Ready (Shift, S&S)

Jon Skovron (Misfit, Abrams)

Victoria Schwab (The Near Witch, Hyperion)

Mark Shulman (Are You Normal?, National Geographic)

Margaret Stohl (Beautiful Chaos, Little Brown)

Arlaina Tibensky (And Then Things Fell Apart, S&S)

Siobhan Vivian (The List, Scholastic)

Melissa Walker (Small Town Sinners, Bloomsbury)

K.M. Walton (Cracked, S&S)

John Corey Whaley (Where Things Come Back, S&S)

Alecia Whitaker (The Queen of Kentucky, Little Brown)

Maryrose Wood (The Unseen Guest, Harper)

Natalie Zaman and Charlotte Bennardo (Sirenz, Flux)

I Joined Twitter Today!

I may be a few years late to the Twitter party, but I finally joined today.  Follow me @AlyssaSheinmel!

The Stone Girl – Coming August 28, 2012

With all the winter coats and Christmas trees, August – and The Stone Girl’s on sale date – certainly seems far away, but I couldn’t let that stop me from sharing the book’s cover. I hope it’ll whet your appetites for the book to come!

Sethie Weiss is hungry, a mean, angry kind of hunger that feels like a piece of glass in her belly. She’s managed to get down to 111 pounds and knows that with a little more hard work—a few more meals skipped, a few more snacks vomited away—she can force the number on the scale even lower. She will work on her body the same way she worked to get her perfect grades, to finish her college applications early, to get her first kiss from Shaw, the boy she loves, the boy who isn’t quite her boyfriend.

Sethie will not allow herself one slip, not one bad day, not one break in concentration. Her body is there for her to work on when everything and everyone else—her best friend, her schoolwork, and Shaw—are gone. From critically acclaimed writer Alyssa B. Sheinmel comes an unflinching and unparalleled portrayal of one girl’s withdrawal, until she is sinking like a stone into her own illness, her own loneliness—her own self.

The Lucky Kind: On Sale May 10th!

May 10th is just around the corner and, with it, the on sale date of my second novel, The Lucky Kind.

For those of you in the New York area, I wanted to share all the details for my upcoming events at Style.Licious – up in my old neighborhood, the Upper East Side – and in Brooklyn at Book Court. I’m also participating in a Teen Author Reading Night on June 1st, with a bevy of amazing authors (including my sister, Courtney Sheinmel).

And, thanks to the wonderful ladies at The Teen Book Scene, you can follow my blog tour, starting May 1 at http://ReadingTeen.net/. The full tour schedule is below as well.

I will also be visiting RandomBuzzers.com on Monday, May 9-Friday, May 13, to answer any and all of your questions!

Hope to see you – and hear from you – soon!

Alyssa’s Event Details

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Style.Licious

1418 Second Ave.
(at 74th Street)

New York, NY 10021

4pm-6pm

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Book Court
163 Court Street

Brooklyn, New York 11201

6pm

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Teen Author Reading Night

Mulberry Street Branch of NYPL

(Corner of Mulberry and Jersey)
6pm-7:30pm

Featured Authors:

Susane Colasanti

Dan Ehrenhaft, Jodi Lynn Anderson, and Andisheh Nouraee

Katie Finn

Catherine Greenman

Megan McCafferty

Sarah Mlynowski

Courtney Sheinmel

Emily Wing Smith

Caisse St. Onge

The Lucky Kind Blog Tour

Sunday, May 1: Author Interview at http://ReadingTeen.net/
Monday, May 2: Book Review at http://agoodaddiction.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, May 3: “When I’m Not Writing” at http://www.pageturnersblog.com/
Wednesday, May 4: Book Review at http://www.hopelessbibliophile.com/
Thursday, May 5: An interview with Eden Reiss at http://thebookscout.blogspot.com/
Friday, May 6: Book Review at http://totalbookaholic.blogspot.com/
Friday, May 6: Writer Unboxed at http://writerunboxed.com/
Saturday, May 7: Top Ten List at http://bloggers-heart-books.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 8: Book Review at http://thebookscout.blogspot.com/
Monday, May 9: Nick’s Top Ten List at http://www.hopelessbibliophile.com/
Tuesday, May 10: Book Review at http://ReadingTeen.net/
Wednesday, May 11: “This Or That” at http://totalbookaholic.blogspot.com/
Thursday, May 12: Book Review at http://www.pageturnersblog.com/
Friday, May 13: An Interview with Nick Brandt at http://agoodaddiction.blogspot.com/
Friday, May 13: Writer Unboxed at http://writerunboxed.com/
Saturday, May 14: Book Review at http://bloggers-heart-books.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, June 1: The Contemps at http://www.thecontemps.com/