Hunger Games movie news...

Do you love the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins? Are you as excited as I am about the movie? Well that this news are something for you. The official movie poster has been released!

Follow the link to read an article about the movie and watch this spellbinding and beautiful poster come to life in an amazing animation.
You don't know what the Hunger Games is about? Never mind, that's what I'm here for. Read the official description:

Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives. In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death - televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
 
And here is Jennifer Lawrence who will play the part of Katniss:

Are you excited about this upcoming movie? What was the first impression you got, when you read the books?
Are you going to read them, if you haven't already, before the movie comes out?
Let me know in the comments :)
Best wishes to all those excited Hunger Games fangirls and fanboys out there :)
KJ

How to... Create a Character Part I

Characters are one of the most important parts of a story, so today we will take a closer look on how a Character should be.

First of all there are three different sorts of Characters:

1. The Protagonist, our lovely hero, who tries to safe the world… well sometimes.
2. The Antagonist, the villain. He doesn’t need to be bad, he just needs to work against the protagonist
3. The Sidekick. Ah, the memorable and funny sidekick. What would Frodo have done, without Sam? Yeah, right. He would have failed.

Because of the variety of different genres this cast of characters is often changed and sometimes you don’t even recognize who is who.

But despite which sort the character belongs to, there are some traits that every character needs. We call a well written character three dimensional because we have the feeling that he comes to life between the pages.

Such a character has a goal, something he fights for. He has a reason, a motivation why he acts like he does and we can understand those motivations. In most times we even recognize a part of ourselves in the character we are reading about. That is the main reason we continue to read the story, we empathize with the character and we want to know how his story ends. That can happen with the protagonist as well as with the antagonist. I remember a lot of times when I felt for the bad guy (like always :) ).

Your character needs a back story. He isn’t born in the first few pages of your story, he lived before and things happened to him. Bad and good things. Those things changed your character, the way he sees life, the way he interacts with others and the way he reacts in different situations. So, to understand the character we, as the reader, have to know something about his past. Not everything of course, that would be too much, but maybe just one little bit of information (why the protagonist and the sidekick are so loyal to each other for example)

So for today we learned, that a character needs Motivation, a Goal and a Background.

What else does a good character need in your opinion?

On the next “How to…” we will talk about that. I’m thinking about doing more How to’s about creative writing (to see the others click here and here) on a regular basis (something like Writing Wednesday). What do you think about that? Tell me about it in the comments

Greetings

KJ

Bloodlines Trailer!

And here is it, just for the fans:
The official Bloodlines book Trailer! *fangirl scream*

Just klick here :)

But remember, the actors in this Trailer are just for the trailer and they have nothing to do with the Vampire Academy movie. If you want to join the cast discussion go to the official Vampire Academy Movie Page and vote for your favorite actor.

Something I wanted to share...

I just headed over to Penguin between the lines 
And found this amazaing thing: Teaser quote of the week
So here is this weeks Teaser quote from Penguin:

"We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything. In his eyes, there was no trace of what had happened between us earlier, and I could feel something inside me break.
So that was that. We were finally, finally over.
I looked at him, and I felt so sad, because this thought occurred to me: I will never look at you in the same way ever again. I’ll never be that girl. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway. "

It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han

I read it and I was just like "Oh my gosh, I have to read that book"  So I flew out into the internet to get you all infos about It's Not Summer Without You:

So Jenny Han is the author of The Summer I Turned Pretty and this is her second novel.

And here is the official description:

When something is perfect, you hope it never ends . . .
Isabel's lazy, long hot summers at her family friends' beach house are over.

Conrad – sexy and unavailable - is the only boy she's ever loved. He's left for college, taking her heart with him. Jeremiah, his gorgeous brother, is still Isabel's best friend – but maybe friendship isn't enough for him anymore . . .

Isabel just wants everything to stay the same, because change means moving on. But if she stops looking back, will she find a future she never knew she wanted? 

What do you think about the book and that Teaser-thing? What makes you atracted to books? Cover, title, teaser or description? Tell me about it in the comments :)
Best wishes
KJ

A million Suns Cover...

Here is for you the cover of A Million Suns by Beth Revis, the sequel to her novel Across the Universe:

For more information on the book and the cover go to the official Facebook page.
A Million Suns will be released in January 2012.
If you don't know the series yet, you got to check it out. Here is the official description for the first book:

Amy has left the life she loves for a world 300 years away

Trapped in space and frozen in time, Amy is bound for a new planet. But fifty years before she's due to arrive, she is violently woken, the victim of an attempted murder. Now Amy's lost on board and nothing makes sense - she's never felt so alone.

Yet someone is waiting for her. He wants to protect her; and more if she'll let him. 
But who can she trust amidst the secrets and lies? A killer is out there - and Amy has nowhere to hide . . .

And of course, the book trailer:

And don't forget to stay tuned, because we are just an hour away from the release of the official Bloodlines trailer!
Greetings
KJ

Waiting on... Sweet Venom

Today we'll start a new section, in which I'll introduce to you some upcoming books I can't wait to get my hands on. So we will start with one of the upcoming Harperteen releases:

Sweet Venom by Tara Lynn Shields.
Tera Lynn Shields is the author of Forgive my Fins and Fins are forever (take a look at them here). Both books are about a mermaid living in our world.
So her new book will be released on September 6 by Harperteen. To visit the official book site go here and here is the description:

Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.

Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.

Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they’re triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.

These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful Gorgon maligned in myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

Sounds like a new and interesting storyline. I just hope the book holds what it promises, but we'll have to wait another 2 months to find out...
Is Sweet Venom on your Wish list? Tell me about it in the comments.
Greetings
KJ