A shiny review of CRASH from Kirkus!

CRASH
Author: McMann, Lisa

Review Issue Date: January 1, 2013
Online Publish Date: December 12, 2012
Publisher:Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Pages: 240
Price ( Hardcover ): $16.99
Publication Date: January 8, 2013
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-1-4424-0391-8
Category: Fiction
Series: Visions
Volume: 1

Seeing is believing…unless you’re the only one with the vision.
McMann kicks off the first book in her new Visions series with a bang. On nearly every flat surface—billboards, televisions and road signs—Jules Demarco sees an out-of-control snowplow crash into a restaurant, causing an explosion and killing those inside. With a depressed grandfather who committed suicide and a moody, hoarder father, she’s certain her Italian family will commit her if they find out about her visions. There’s also their probable anger to contend with: The restaurant in Jules’ vision is their rival pizza parlor, and one of the dead is Sawyer Angotti, her secret, lifelong crush and son of the adversarial restaurateur. As in the Wake trilogy, a strong female protagonist pairs with quick pacing, realistic dialogue and the right amount of romance to drive this suspenseful story. Using clues from her ever more frequent visions, social outcast Jules tries to figure out the exact time of the crash in an attempt to thwart it, risking her already shaky standing with Sawyer, her parents and her classmates. In the process of saving lives, she also discovers some dark family secrets. The teen’s occasional lists of five items, such as “Five reasons why I, Jules Demarco, am shunned,” keep the drama on the lighter side.
McMann is on her way to becoming the next queen of supernatural thrillers. (Supernatural thriller. 14 & up)

--from Kirkus Reviews

Heise Reads & Recommends: CRASH (Visions, book 1) by Lisa McMann

 The early reviews are coming in for my new teen novel, CRASH!

Heise Reads & Recommends: CRASH (Visions, book 1) by Lisa McMann: Title: CRASH (Visions, book 1) Author: Lisa McMann Publisher: Simon Pulse Release Date: January 8, 2013 Number of Pages: 256 Source o...

CRASH (Visions Book 1) comes out January 8!

And it's a Winter Indie Next List pick. Here's the lovely review:

Crash: Visions, Book One, by Lisa McMann
(Simon Pulse, $16.99, 9781442403918)
“The term ‘page-turner’ does not even begin to describe this latest book from McMann! From the moment readers meet Jules and begin to get a glimpse inside her life — a life without friends, spent working in her parent’s pizza shop, and with a recurring vision of the death of her estranged best friend — they’ll be hooked. Jules is a flawed character in all of the best ways, and McMann has created a plot that will have the reader flipping pages faster and faster to find out what happens next. An excellent start to a new series!” — Amanda Snow, Hooray for Books!, Alexandria, VA

THE UNWANTEDS is a NYT Bestseller!

Did you hear the news? THE UNWANTEDS hit the New York Times children's paperback bestseller list at #9. I am so excited! THANK YOU for making it happen!

 Book 2, ISLAND OF SILENCE, is now available in stores and online everywhere in hardcover, ebook, or audio download. If you favorite bookstore doesn't have it in stock, ask them to order it for you.

 I'm home this week, but heading out on the road to Provo, UT next Wednesday, and visiting San Francisco and Austin, Texas in October. Get the scoop on all my tour stops here.

If you missed my "behind the scenes of The Unwanteds" post on Nerdy Book Club, you can find it here.

Thanks again for all your wonderful support! I wouldn't get to do this awesome job without you.

xo
Lisa

Unwanteds Island of Silence Tour

 Book 2 of The Unwanteds is out, and book 3 is in the works!

Here's where I'll be this fall. I'll sign all the books you bring with you (if the store allows). Please purchase at least one book from the bookstore event you attend so that the store can continue to host cool events like these:

Mon, Sept 10, 5pm
BLUE WILLOW BOOKSHOP with Margaret Peterson Haddix
14532 Memorial Dr.
Houston,TX

Tues, Sept 11, 7pm
BookPeople with Margaret Peterson Haddix
603 N Lamar Blvd
Austin,TX

Wed, Sept 12, 7pm
BARNES & NOBLE with Margaret Peterson Haddix
Stonebriar Center Mall
Frisco,TX

Thurs, Sept 13, 5pm
MRS. NELSON'S TOY AND BOOK SHOP with Margaret Peterson Haddix
1030 Bonita Ave.
La Verne,CA

Saturday, Sept 15, 10:30am
BRIDGE TO BOOKS with Margaret Peterson Haddix, Shannon Messenger, Helen Stringer
McKinley School
325 South Oak Knoll Avenue
Pasadena,CA

Wed, Sept 26, 2012, 7pm
Provo City Library with Brandon Mull
Library Ballroom
550 North University Avenue
Provo, UT 84601

Saturday, Oct 6, 2012, 2pm
Changing Hands Bookstore Club Read
Tempe, AZ

Wed & Thurs, Oct 10-11
San Francisco area events TBA

Friday, Oct 12, 2012
NCIBA

Saturday, Oct 20, 2012
SCIBA

Sat-Sun, Oct 27-28, 2012
Texas Book Festival

Friday, Nov 9, 2012
AzLA annual conference

Nov 16-18, 2012
NCTE

The Unwanteds: Island of Silence is on-sale now!

Available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook, in stores and online. Yay! Find me on tour here.

Back to reality: Tour, Prize Packs, and a new stage of life

 Hello friends! Fall is a season of firsts, isn't it?

This week we moved my firstborn to college. The house is quieter. This morning I keep looking up when I hear a noise, expecting to see him. There's this fist-sized ball of pride and loneliness in my throat, and my eyes keep leaking at random times. It was hard saying goodbye yesterday, knowing I won't see him until Thanksgiving. But I'm so excited for him, and I know he's going to have some of the best times of his life.

My friend Margaret Peterson Haddix, with whom I toured last year for The Unwanteds and with whom I'll be touring again this year for The Unwanteds: Island of Silence (and her newest book Caught), has been really helpful -- her firstborn went to college last year, and her second child is heading that way this year. In a way, she's helped me prepare for this for a year.

It didn't really make it any easier. I'm glad I had my sunglasses handy when I hugged my son goodbye -- no kid wants to see his parents fall apart, grasping at the past, when they are only looking toward the exciting future.

Today I looked at the calendar and I realized I have an exciting future too. I have a book coming out in ten days. Ten days! That means I'll be touring soon. Amazing how life and careers go on here at the McMann household minus one.

If you are in the following areas, I will be nearby in September & October:

Tempe, AZ
Phoenix, AZ
Houston, TX
Austin, TX
Frisco, TX
La Verne, CA
Pasadena, CA
Provo, UT
San Francisco, CA
Austin, TX (again) for the Texas Book Festival
For booksellers, I'll be visiting NCIBA and SCIBA.
And for teachers, I'll be at NCTE in Las Vegas in November.

Next spring I'll be doing several book festivals as well around the country. Check out the full tour schedule here.

Continuing the tradition from last year, I have another free Prize Pack for this Unwanteds book. It's only available by pre-ordering through my local independent bookstore, Changing Hands, through Sept 4 (release day for Island of Silence). They ship almost anywhere, so you don't have to be local or even in the US to get the prize pack!

Inside is a handful of goodies including another collectible drawing by my talented college boy, this time of Matilda, a new character in the Unwanteds series. She's the cutest, ugliest gargoyle ever. Wanna see?

I want to thank you for all of your support over the years, and for your amazing love of The Unwanteds series, which is very dear to me. I hope to have several more books in the series--book 3 is already in the editing stages. Pre-order your prize pack now -- you never know, maybe that collectible drawing will sell big on eBay someday and it'll help your kid go to college too. We can have leaky eyes together. :)

xoxo
Lisa

It's prize pack time!

You can now pre-order your signed copy of THE UNWANTEDS: ISLAND OF SILENCE from Changing Hands Bookstore and get the free collectible prize pack (while they last). Pick it up at the event (Sept 5, 7pm) OR have it shipped - they ship just about anywhere!

Infinity Ring and Unwanteds Island of Silence

Exciting news! The Infinity Ring online game, which goes with the book series, is gearing up. Get a video sneak peek here, and next Tuesday head over to InfinityRing.com to see more!

And if you're into The Unwanteds, you can enter here to win an early copy of the second book in the series, The Unwanteds: Island of Silence (on sale Sept 4).

I'll have info on how you can get an exclusive Unwanteds Prize Pack in a few days -- stay tuned!

As always, check my tour page if you want to see where I'll be touring this fall. I'll be making stops in Phoenix, Texas, and Southern California, and then I'll be heading to more cities. I'll post them when I have the details. And I'm excited that some of those events will be with the amazing Margaret Peterson Haddix once again.

I hope your summer has been full of books and fun!

Read the first few chapters of Unwanteds 2: Island of Silence FREE!

Just click here and 'like' the SimonKids page to get the first 35 pages. In stores Sept 4!

Find me on tour this fall here.

My Infinity Ring book has a cover!

So excited for this series. Book 1, written by James Dashner, comes out at the end of August. Book 2 by Carrie Ryan is set for November, and mine, book 3, will be out February 5. Here it is:

The Unwanteds: Now in Paperback

And it's only $6.99. Included in the back is a sneak peek at book 2 in the series; The Unwanteds: Island of Silence, which comes out Sept 4.

Announcing CRASH: book one of the VISIONS series

How much do you love the cover of my upcoming teen novel CRASH? Read all about it at Hollywood Crush!
CRASH, book one of the VISIONS series, comes out January 8.
Here's the flap copy:

Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.

What she can’t handle is the vision. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode... and nine body bags in the snow.

She has no idea why this is happening to her or if she’s going crazy. It hardly matters, because the visions are everywhere--on billboards, television screens, windows--and she’s the only one who can see them.

But it’s not until the vision starts coming more frequently, and revealing more clues, that Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it's someone she knows. Someone she’s been in love with for as long as she can remember.

Don't forget to add it on Goodreads!

What's up?

So the other day I looked up from my computer and asked my husband Matt, "Did we have winter already?"

And he was all like, "Yeah, honey, it's spring now."

 See, I've been writing a lot of books the past six months. And by a lot, I mean three. And while I'm not nearly done editing them, I just finished the rough draft of the third and final one yesterday. (What are they, you ask? One is UNWANTEDS book 3, one is my book in the INFINITY RING series which you can read about in USA Today, and the third one? Is top secret. Hee.)

There's still a TON of work that needs to happen on all three, but there's something so awesome about getting to the end of a book and figuring out just what that last line will be. Never mind all the mess that lies between the first line and the last line. We'll get to that. But yesterday, in celebration, I went out. All by myself. Not on tour, or to anything author related. I went to the gourmet market and had a blast.

 This is the glamorous life of an author. For the first time in about six months, I had all the time in the world to look at produce. I was not there to research or to speak or work, I was there with a different hat on, a hat I hadn't tried on in a long time. I wandered around just looking at all the beautifully colored fruits and vegetables, from brilliant red peppers to deep purple eggplant. I bought five absolutely gorgeous avocados. I bought some fresh shrimp, and some manchego cheese, and some marcona almonds, and some beautiful salami and a freshly baked baguette, and some shallots, and limes and some root-looking vegetables I saw on a cooking show once but have never tried, and now I can't remember what they're called so I can't even look them up to see how to prepare them. Ha! But it was SO. MUCH. FUN.

 Now, I'm wondering. What do you like to do for fun when you get that feeling of relief after you've finally made it to the end of a long, arduous task?

Writing, writing, writing...

1. I can't wait to tell you what I'm working on.

2. Hi! I love you.

3. Had a great signing in Madrid, Spain last week -- thanks Everest!

4. Dead To You is in stores now. Unwanteds book 2 comes out in September.

5. In 2013? I will have four books coming out. Isn't that insane? No wonder I've been in the writing cave.

6. Okay, okay, I'll tell you what two of them are. Infinity Ring book 3, and Unwanteds book 3.

7. The other two...well, it's a secret. I'll let you know.

8. I'll be in Houston April 14 for Teen Book Con!

9. That is all for now.

xoxo

DEAD TO YOU is in stores this week!

This is the first time I'm not doing a major tour for one of my books--it feels strange! And I'll actually be home with my family on both Valentine's Day and my birthday this year, hooray! But oh, how I will miss you.

The timing is great, though. I've got a few tight deadlines in the first half of 2012, so being able to work at home means I'll be a lot more productive (which means more books for you in 2013)! But I'll miss meeting booksellers, librarians, teachers, and especially teens this time around. I think I will be touring again in the fall when The Unwanteds: Island of Silence comes out.

The good news is that I'll be doing a few short visits here and there. This Thursday I'll be at CHANGING HANDS BOOKSTORE in Tempe, AZ for the launch party of DEAD TO YOU (call ahead to order personalized/signed copies--they ship almost anywhere). I'll be at the Chino Book Festival in Chino, CA on Sunday, Feb 26, signing in the Mrs. Nelson's Toys & Books booth. I'll also be visiting one of my favorite cities, Houston, for their Teen Book Festival in mid-April. As always, you can follow my travels on the TOUR page on my website. I will add more as they come along.

I hope you enjoy DEAD TO YOU! It's a stand-alone. And hopefully soon I'll be able to let you know what's coming next -- I can't wait to share the news! Stay tuned.

Thank you for buying my books! I really appreciate you.

xoxo

The Writing Cave

Hello all! I'm resurfacing from the writing cave for a day and realized it's been a month since I've blogged. I'm a terrible blogger--I'm sure you'll agree. I prefer the simple, quick tweet or status update to the longer format of the blog. So if you're ever looking for me, you can find me on facebook or twitter.

Can you believe it's only 2 weeks until DEAD TO YOU comes out? If you're wondering what it's about, you can find a description of it on my website. Or maybe I'll just put it here:

Dead To You - Available February 7, 2012!

Ethan was abducted from his front yard when he was just seven years old. Now, at sixteen, he has returned to his family. It's a miracle... at first. Then the tensions start to build. His reintroduction to his old life isn't going smoothly, and his family is tearing apart all over again. If only Ethan could remember something, anything, about his life before, he'd be able to put the pieces back together.

But there's something that's keeping his memory blocked. Something unspeakable...

As always, there is a little love story. I hope you enjoy it! You can pre-order online or check your local store to see if they have it on order.

What's up next? Well, let me just tell you:

Feb 7, 2012: DEAD TO YOU
Sept 4, 2012: THE UNWANTEDS: ISLAND OF SILENCE (bk 2 of the series)
Feb 2013: My book in the INFINITY RING series will be out! (I'm writing book 3)
Spring 2013: CRASH - a teen paranormal about a girl, a meatball truck, visions, forbidden love, hoarding, and nine body bags in the snow. Potential series.
Fall 2013: THE UNWANTEDS book 3!

No wonder I've been hanging out in the writing cave. Time to go back in.