DIANA WAGMAN READS FROM HER NOVEL EXTRAORDINARY OCTOBER AND FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK READS FROM HER NOVEL THE ELEMENTALS

With the launch of her first young adult novel, Diana Wagman along with Francesca Lia Block will discuss crossover between the YA genre and adult fiction.

Extraordinary October (Ig Publishing)

October is an ordinary girl. From her plain looks to her average grades, there seems to be nothing special about her. Then, three days before her eighteenth birthday, she develops a strange itch that won t go away, and her life is turned upside down. Suddenly, she can hear dogs talk, make crows fly, and two new and very handsome boys at school are vying for her affections. After she starts transplanting herself through solid rock, October learns that she is not ordinary at all, but the daughter of a troll princess and a fairy prince, and a pawn in a deadly war between the trolls and the fairies. Now October will have to use all of her growing powers to save her family, and stop a mysterious evil that threatens to destroy the fairy world. 

In the fantastical vein of authors such as Julie Kagawa and Holly Black, Extraordinary October takes us on a magical journey from the streets of Los Angeles to the beautiful and mythical underground fairy kingdom. 

Praise for Extraordinary October

"In an auspicious debut for teens, adult author Wagman proves particularly adept at mixing genres and maintains a terrific balance between fantastical (and occasional macabre) happenings and genuine teen perceptions."--Kirkus Review

Extraordinary October is author Diana Wagman’s first novel for Young Adults. She has written five novels for adults, most recently Life #6.  Her stories and essays have been published in The LA Times, Conjunctions, The Colorado Review and elsewhere and included in the anthologies LA Noir and MFA vs. NYC.  

The Elementals (Griffin)

From a star YA writer Francesca Lia Block, author of the Weetzie Bat books, comes an adult novel about a student, haunted by the disappearance of a friend, who must face the truth

The Elementals is on one level a contemporary story about a young woman, Ariel Silverman, facing the challenges of her first years away at college in Berkeley, California, while her mother battles cancer at home in Los Angeles. But the book takes on deeper, stranger meanings when we contend with Ariel's obsession with the disappearance of her best friend, Jeni, who vanished without a trace a few years before. Her emptiness of spirit seems finally to find some healing with three mysterious, beautiful and seductive young people living in a strange old house in the Berkeley hills. But at what price? 

Praise for The Elementals

“The uniqueness of Ariel as a character as well as the mystery that unravels during the course of the book will make [The Elementals] appealing to both teen and adult readers… An engaging portrait.” – BUST Magazine  

"The late great Diana Wynne Jones would approve of Lia Block's The Elementals, a hypnotic account of a girl's first years in college following the disappearance of her best friend on a school trip and the diagnosis of her mother's cancer. As a portrait of a troubled and impressionable girl, Ariel Silverman shimmers in the very air between page and eyelashes. Tam Lin meets the tabloids." —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly. She was named Writer-in-Residence at Pasadena City College in 2014. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, German Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese. Francesca has also published stories, poems, essays and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock and Rattle among others. In addition to writing, she teaches fiction workshops at UCLA Extension, Antioch University,  and privately in Los Angeles where she was born, raised and currently still lives.