Mundie Moms

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Mundie Moms is Interviewing Stephenie Meyer, Max Irons & Jake Abel Next Week in Dallas!


This coming Tuesday, March 12th at 2 pm The Host stop will be in Dallas, TX for a book signing with Stephenie Meyer, and actors Max Irons and Jake Abel! I'm thrilled to announce that Mundie Moms and Twilights Moms have teamed up to bring you an interview with Stephenie, Max and Jake! Shandra and I will be there next Tuesday and we can't wait!

Have questions for Stephenie, Max or Jake about THE HOST? Leave me a comment and I'll go through the questions and take a few with me to the interview. ONLY comments about The Host will be looked at. ;)

The Signing:
The signing itself started at 2 pm on March 12th at the Barnes & Noble located at:
7700 West Northwest Hwy
Ste. 300
Dallas, TX 75225

Those who purchase a copy of The Host, or The Host Movie Companion along with a movie poster will get you a ticket to this event. THIS IS A TICKETED event. Apparently on Monday, March 11th at 5 pm they will begin handing out tickets to those who have purchased one of these items. Stephenie will be signing 1 other item, which has to be one of her books. This item will not be personalized, only The Host item will be. 

The Host hits theaters on Friday March 29th! I've heard it's FABULOUS! 

*image source from Once Upon A Twilight

Bus Tour Signing: Special Guest Announced at The Grove Event in L.A.


Oh you lucky MMs who are going to The Grove signing in Los Angeles. Not only do you get yummy lattes and the best croissants at the nearby Farmer's Market, you get Cassie and LILY COLLINS! Sarah Rees Brennan will be at all the stops and Maureen Johnson will be joining Cassie at "most of them".

Here's what Cassie posted:
The bus tour for Clockwork Princess is drawing ever nigher! I’ll be in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Mission Viejo, Menlo Park (San Francisco), Seattle, and Vancouver. Sarah Rees Breenan and Maureen Johnson will be accompanying me at most of the stops — Sarah will be at all of them.

You can find all the details and how to get tickets, if needed, ahead of time, here.

I also have some exciting information for those coming to the LA signing: we’re going to have a special guest — Lily Collins.

She’ll be at the store to take pictures with fans and also to answer questions about playing Clary in the film.

And who knows? Maybe some other cast members will pop by too. ;)

Lily is incredibly sweet and I’m so glad she’ll be there!
I know I can think of a whole lot of questions for the four of them! MMs, if you'll be attending the L.A. signing and tweeting it maybe you can leave your twitter name in the comments and we can follow the fun on twitter.

Cassie Re-visits the TID Love Triangle

Clockwork Angel by kara-lija.

Yesterday on her tumblr, Cassie posted an answer to one of our favorite questions regarding The Infernal Devices' love triangle -- if Will and Jem are so close, parabatai even, how could they not know about each other's affection towards Tessa?  She answered it originally (spoilers for Clockwork Prince for those doing the read-a-long for the first time click at your own risk) here, but here's what she posted yesterday:

To break it down to basics: neither Jem or Will knew how the other one felt about Tessa because the other one had never told them.

More complicatedly, they don’t know because the scenes in which their feelings are obvious — Will breaking down in front of Magnus, Jem when he’s alone with Tessa — are never enacted when they other guy is around. We see Will alone with Tessa, telling her he’s wanted to kiss her since the first time he saw her; Jem’s not around for that. He never sees that. Will’s not around for Jem telling Tessa she makes him want to write poetry. He never sees that. He never knows about it. The reader knows all those things, and factors them into their knowledge of the characters. But it’s important to not forget that the characters have not read the book.

(And, also, they are all being chased by giant robots, Jem is dying, Will’s family is being held hostage and he’s under a curse, so while they are close, I never thought that Dude 1’s romantic situation would be the first thing on Dude 2’s mind, no matter how brothery their love.)

So will it be answered in Clockwork Princess? It’s addressed, but not really answered, in the sense that I’ve never thought of it as a mystery. I think there is a belief that with love comes perfect understanding and perfect telepathy, but that’s not how people are. Thats why real relationships involve “working on communication.” Because communication is work, not magic, and while you may love someone enough to be able to tell when they’re upset, that doesn’t mean you can tell why. The other person has to tell you.

However, I did answer the question several times after Clockwork Prince came out, so in honor of Princess coming soon, I thought it might help to revisit those essays, out from under a cut tag now:

1) Why Will doesn’t notice how Jem feels.

This is a bit more difficult to explain (in my mind) than why Jem didn’t notice Will loved Tessa (though I get asked that more!) — not because there’s a not a valid reasons but because it isn’t as concrete as “Will was hiding it, no?” Jem wasn’t hiding it. And yet, Will genuinely didn’t realize. So, why?

I don’t want to say “Will doesn’t think of Jem as a threat” because that implies all sorts of things — that people don’t see Jem as masculine (not true) or that Jem is some sort of beta or sidekick for Will, which isn’t true either. However, what is true is that for five years Jem has been a source for Will of only good things — in some ways, his only source of good things. Jem has protected him. Jem has loved him. Jem has had faith in him when nobody else did.

In a lot of ways Will isn’t capable of imagining that Jem might be the cause of pain for him (in any other way than Jem himself dying.) In his mind, Jem’s a part of him. It would be like him imagining that his own left hand might suddenly start punching him in the face. That’s why when he finds out that Jem has proposed to Tessa, his first reaction is disbelief: “Jem? *My* Jem?” Jem is his, his parabatai, his other half, his blood brother. Jem is not separate enough from him, in Will’s mind, to take independent action that would be shocking or surprising to Will. Will is also completely caught up with and distracted by his own circumstances — desperately trying to get the curse off himself, protect his family, protect Tessa (from himself) protect Jem (from running out of drugs.) He is stretched about as thin as you could be. Under normal circumstances, he would probably also have noticed Jessamine was sneaking around, but there’s too much going on: he just doesn’t have the room for it.

This doesn’t make him a bad or selfish person. His circumstances are desperate and extreme. They require his full attention. But he himself thinks it, at the end of the book: “Will had never considered [Jem’s romantic happiness]. He had dwelled on whether Jem was safe, whether he was surviving, but not if he was happy.”

Being too caught up in whether your best friend is going to die to consider whether they’re into the same girl as you doesn’t make you a bad person; in this case, Will’s human frailties are far out of proportion to the level to which he is punished for them. But then, this isn’t a morality tale: it’s the messy story of three good people trying to do right, caught up in an impossible situation. The desire to lay blame on one of them is reasonable, but I think the thing about it that makes it upsetting is precisely that nobody really is to blame.

My .02, anyway!

2) Why Jem doesn’t notice how Will feels.


I think that, when presented with a really painful situation like the one at the end of Clockwork Prince, there is a sort of natural desire to assign blame. It makes it less painful to imagine that what’s going on is someone’s fault — Tessa’s selfish! Will is entitled! Jem is blind! — than to think that these are basically decent people trying hard to be good, and they get screwed anyway. Because one is a moral lesson (always a bit comforting, as it offers the illusion of control) and the other says life is a agonizing lottery of tragedy and chance (not comforting at all.)

Now, to the specifics of the question. First, Jem noticing Will noticing a pretty girl is hardly equivalent to Jem noticing Will being in deathless love. Will notices pretty girls all the time. It’s in fact, part of his persona. Jem noting that Will thinks Tessa is pretty in CA is not about him commenting on Will’s feelings so much as it is him getting confirmation for his own. [Sometimes, my husband offers, when you think a girl is a babe, you want confirmation from your buddy that she is, in fact, as babelicious as you believe.]

Jem is an observant guy. But he is under no illusions that he knows everything about Will, and he is frank about that. From Clockwork Angel, when he tells Tessa he has no idea why Will won’t speak to his family:

““And you’ve never asked him why?”
“If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me,” Jem said. “You asked why I think he tolerates me better than other people. I’d imagine it’s precisely because I’ve never asked him why.”
Nor does Will think Jem knows everything about him.
“I don’t know,” Tessa said. “I’m not sure anyone does understand you, except possibly Jem.”
“Jem doesn’t understand me,” Will said. “He cares for me— like a brother might. It’s not the same thing.”

What Jem offers Will, what makes their relationship unique and workable, is precisely this: unconditional love without demand, perfect trust without perfect understanding. Will’s statement that Jem doesn’t understand him is not a criticism of Jem. He does not want Jem to understand him, because he doesn’t want his curse understood. He deliberately lies and hides things from Jem, and Jem knows it and accepts it because he loves him, but it’s a far stretch from that to “Jem ought to be able to read Will’s mind.”

Certainly Jem is able to tell that Will is in no good mood, but Will is often in no good mood, and much of Will’s upset during Clockwork Prince can be put down to his awful near-encounter with his family and his panic over their well-being. Because a lot of it is about that, and Jem would not be incorrect in assuming so. There seems to be an assumption here that Jem and Tessa ought to be able to see through Will like glass, even though Will says over and over that he isn’t interested in Tessa. If Jem and Will are really all that close, the assumption seems to be, surely Jem would be able to read Will’s mind and see he loves Tessa? But the flip side of that assumption is: since Jem and Will truly know each other, Will also knows exactly how to lie to Jem and make it stick. As for poor Tessa, we’ve been over this: there is no reason to assume a guy who repeatedly says he isn’t interested in you or commitment is not serious. Really, that way lies misery and ending up on Tool Academy with your loser boyfriend.

[Also, if the suggestion is that parabatai ought to be able to read each other’s mind: why is Will so dense as to go off and drug himself up at an opium den and have no idea what that would do to Jem? Why does Will not notice that Jem loves Tessa, given that Will is bending every last atom of his will to concealing his love for Tessa, but Jem isn’t bothering? He’s taking her out on carriage rides and probably oogling at her at the breakfast table. I mean, really, Will.]

And lastly, it’s not like Jem doesn’t have his own stuff going on. He’s dying, and dependent on a drug whose continued availability is limited. He’s in love with a girl, but knows that being a dying man, he doesn’t have a lot to offer. When she unexpectedly accepts his proposal, he’s joyous. Meanwhile, the last time he saw Will, Will was in a terrific mood (as he’d just had the curse lifted.) So Jem’s sitting there, basically overwhelmingly happy for probably the first time in his life since his parents died, and when Will comes in, he’s supposed to flip like a switch and suddenly care about nothing but the possibility that Will might be unhappy despite the fact he hasn’t mentioned it and was just fine an hour ago?

C’mon, let the guy have his moment of happiness. After all, as we know, life is a meaningless lottery of tragedy and chance.
I just love Cassie's answer, and I'm looking forward to reading how this resolves itself (or doesn't entirely) in Clockwork Princess. I think Cassie's captured what goes on between close friends; that level of knowing and yet not knowing, at times, that the closest of friendships share. Sometimes, we're too close or too distracted to see what's right there in front of our eyes. What do you think about this, MMs??

Blog Tour: Operation Oleander by Valerie O. Patterson

Welcome to today tour for Valerie Patterson's OPERATION OLEANDER. I'm thrilled to have Valerie on the blog today. Before you read her guest post, here's a little bit about her newest release:


Ninth-grader Jess Westmark had the best of intentions when she started Operation Oleander to raise money for a girls’ orphanage in Kabul. She named her charity for the oleander that grows both in her Florida hometown and in Afghanistan, where her father is deployed. But on one of her father's trips to deliver supplies to the orphans, a car bomb explodes nearby and her father is gravely injured. Worse, her best friend’s mother and some of the children are killed, and people are blaming Operation Oleander for turning the orphanage into a military target for the Taliban. Is this all Jess’s fault?


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Even as a child, I could be found with a book or pencil and paper in hand. Once, when my dad had to rush my younger sister to the hospital for a broken arm (she fell off my horse), I remember dashing back into the house to get my books and paper before Dad pulled out of the driveway. I knew we’d be in the hospital for hours and I had to have my writing. I was forever crafting poems and short stories and a few “novels” written on three-hole punch notebook paper stapled together. Today, when I do school visits, I show students copies of my first “novels” and “picture books.” I encourage them not to give up on their storytelling dreams.

I grew up in Florida near the Gulf of Mexico, and that setting appears in OPERATION OLEANDER. I fictionalized a location in northwest Florida and placed an Army post on it. For me setting is critical, and I hope that means that the novel is anchored in a specific time and place, and that the reader absorbs that sense of place from the details selected.

After college and graduate school, I moved to Washington, DC. I wrote almost nothing for five years while I settled into a law career, but the need to write refused to go away, and I began to sketch out stories . . . and then a novel . . . and then another one. I’ve been writing ever since, whether that means at night after work, on weekends, or editing manuscripts at the car repair shop (Yes, I’ve done it!).
I still have the day job, but I’m very lucky to write as well. 



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Thank you Valerie for stopping by Mundie Moms today! 

About the Author:
Valerie O. Patterson grew up near a military base on the Gulf Coast of Florida. She often draws inspiration for her writing from that place of her childhood. Ms. Patterson holds an MFA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. Her first novel for teens, The Other Side of Blue, was published by Clarion/HMH in 2009. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Mystery Writers of America, the Children’s Literature Association, and the Authors Guild. An attorney by day, she lives with her husband in Leesburg, Virginia. For more information about her life and work, visit her website: http://www.valerieopatterson.com/.

About the Book
Published by Clarion Books
Released on: March 5th, 2013
Purchase it from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Add it to Goodreads

The Giveaway
Thank you to the publisher and Blue Slip Media, I have one copy of Operation Oleander to giveaway. To enter, please fill out the form below. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Clockwork Prince Read Along Day #15: Chapter 14


Only 13 more days till Clockwork Princess is out!

If you haven't already, please go sign up for the giveaway. Sign ups close on Friday. 


Welcome to Day 15 of the Clockwork Prince Read Along. You can follow the entire read-a-long and find each of the day's posts here. Remember there's no right or wrong way to participate. Your comments can be as long or a short as you'd like them to be. You can answer 1 or each of the questions asked, it's totally up to you, BUT, in order to be entered into the CP giveaway (which you also had to sign up to win), you do need to be actively participating in the read-a-long. 

Today's discussion is about: Chapter 14
  • The chapter starts off with Charlotte wondering if her pushing Jessamine into being a Shadowhunter, and Jem mentioning she was always wanting, as possible reasons for Jessamine's traitorous actions. Do you think either of those played a role in her choice? I personally think it was a combination of being swept off her feet by Nate, and Mortmain either himself or through Nate, persuading her to help them. We know all how Mortmain works. When he wants something, he gets it.
  • What do you make of Benedict Lightwood working for Mortmain? I feel like some things are starting to come together in this big twist that's slowly starting to unravel, and other things I'm still trying to figure out. Like why doesn't Mortmain just attack already. I want to know what he's waiting for.
  • Well, I'm beginning to like Gideon more and more. Are you surprised about all he admitted to Sophie about his father? I seriously wish something could come out of Sophie and Gideon's friendship. 
  • *sigh* I'm so torn between Will and Jem, but Jem knows how to say the right thing (honest things), and he treats Tessa so respectfully. I love how he treats Tessa. He seems to understand her. He watches her and gets her in ways I don't think Will could. It's just so hard to not want Tessa to be with Jem, even though a small part of me still wishes she'd pick Will. I like that he pointed out how Shadowhunter men and women are treated more equally than mundane men and women are. I think that's such a huge statement for Jem to make given the society they live in. What do you think the relevance is of Jem's comment about that?
Please DO NOT POST SPOILERS. There's some fans who are joining the read-a-long who are reading Clockwork Prince for the first time. 

TMI Tarot Cards by Cassandra Jean

We simply love Cassandra Jean's tarot card series (linked from Cassie's tumblr)and every time Cassie links a new one, we collectively sigh at the perfectly captured images.

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