Mundie Moms

Monday, March 18, 2013

17 & GONE Blog Tour by Nova Ren Suma: Guest Post

Welcome to Penguin Teen's 17 & GONE blog tour stop #1! I'm thrilled to have author Nova Ren Suma on the blog today to talk about her upcoming YA release, and the inspiration behind her 17 & GONE inspiration board. If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to click on the link below to go check it out.


Guest post by Nova Ren Suma

Last year, when I was deep into writing 17 & Gone, I discovered an exciting new distraction and way to collect images that fascinated me: Pinterest. What started off as maybe one more thing to keep me from writing turned into a great source of inspiration, and my 17 & Gone inspiration board was born. I’d often write with the images up on my screen, staring at them in pauses between paragraphs. On each stop on this blog tour I’m highlighting one of the photos that spoke to me and helped me find my way through the darkness of writing this book.




Today’s image is a piece of street photography by an artist who calls himself MisterKey. I didn’t know anything about the image when I first saw it (where it was taken; who of). It was the reaching hand that bothered me. It bothered me so much, I had to write about it.

Another girl could go today. She could be pulling her scarf tight around her face to protect it from the cold, searching through her coat pockets for her car keys so they’re out and ready when she reaches her car in the dark lot. She could glance in through the bright, blazing windows of the nearest restaurant as she hurries past. And then when she’s out of sight the shadowy hands could grab her, the sidewalk could gulp her up.

—from 17 & Gone, page 2

There was something about the idea of shadows coming to claim someone, the simple thought of a girl crossing a parking lot and never making it to the other side, that haunted me.

In fact, I discover now only after doing some research to find the source of this photograph, this image was taken in Budapest, far from the parking lot I imagined in a made-up town in the Hudson Valley area of upstate New York. But the place itself doesn’t much matter, does it? It’s the sinister feeling. The way you want to shout at her to run, worried she won’t escape. So much of that made its way into the novel.

For spotlights on more images from my 17 & Gone inspiration board on Pinterest, keep following this blog tour!


About The Book: 


Seventeen-year-old Lauren is having visions of girls who have gone missing. And all these girls have just one thing in common—they are 17 and gone without a trace. As Lauren struggles to shake these waking nightmares, impossible questions demand urgent answers: Why are the girls speaking to Lauren? How can she help them? And . . . is she next? As Lauren searches for clues, everything begins to unravel, and when a brush with death lands her in the hospital, a shocking truth emerges, changing everything.

By: Nova Ren Suma
Published by: Penguin Teen / Dutton
To Be Released on: March 21st, 2013
Pre-Order from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Add it to Goodreads

About the Author:



Nova Ren Suma is the author of the YA novel Imaginary Girls (Penguin/Dutton, 2011) and the tween novel Dani Noir (Simon & Schuster/Aladdin, 2009), reissued as Fade Out for a YA audience (Simon Pulse, 2012). Nova’s new YA novel, 17 & Gone, is forthcoming in hardcover from Penguin/Dutton on March 21 in the US (March 26 in Canada).
Nova has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and a BA in writing & photography from Antioch College. She’s been awarded fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where she was awarded the Erik A. Takulan Memorial Endowed Fellowship for 2012, the Millay Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and, twice, from the MacDowell Colony. She was selected to attend the 2012 Launch Pad Workshop, a NASA-funded astronomy workshop for writers, and for summer 2013 she was awarded an NEA fellowship for a residency at the Hambidge Center for Arts & Sciences in rural Georgia. She teaches YA novel writing with Mediabistro.
Nova grew up in small towns across the Hudson Valley and can now be found in New York City.

Visit Nova via her: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr

Blog tour schedule:
Monday, 3/18: Mundie Moms
Tuesday, 3/19: Confessions of a Readaholic  
Wednesday, 3/20: The Compulsive Reader 
Thursday, 3/21: The Mod Podge Bookshelf 
Friday, 3/22: Anna Reads 
Monday, 3/25: The Story Siren 
Tuesday, 3/26: A Good Addiction 
Wednesday, 3/27: Radiant Reads 
Thursday, 3/28: Presenting Lenore
Friday, 3/29: Book Chic 

2 comments:

  1. That shadow pic. Haunting. Beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this cover! I am excited to meet this author this coming Sunday!

    ReplyDelete

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