The Official Site of Author Y S Lee » The Author

Book club!

Ying — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:00:42 +0000

First, a confession: I have never belonged to a book club. This might be because I spent quite a long time at university and so had many years of focused and sustained discussion about a book/poem we’d all recently read (or pretended to read). Most classes were adequate-to-fine. A few were dismal. A very few were spectacular. So while I do love talking about books, there’s something about the formality of a Book Club that gives me classroom flashbacks.

As a result, I’d no idea what to expect at my first book club meeting as an author. What can I tell you?

First, that it may be all about the food. Seriously: 8 women. Snacks for, ooh, 16? It was heaven.

Second, that they had all read Spy (or did a great job pretending) and had tons of questions. And they asked me things I’d never thought about – for example, what’s the backstory on the primary agent whose territory Mary Quinn treads on? My brilliant answer: “Um, I haven’t thought about her much.” I think I’d better get on that.

Third, I totally cracked: I’m not supposed to reveal the Candlewick cover for The Body at the Tower yet, because it’s not quite ready. (Soon, soon.) But I brought an ARC and flashed it around shamelessly. The bookclubbers were very kind and humoured my delirious babbling about the story behind the cover. Thanks, ladies.

I had such a great time, thanks to Jennifer O’Donnell who invited me, and Marcia Irving who hosted. It was terrific to meet all of you and I hope you keep in touch! (And thank you very much for the lovely bottle of wine! You really shouldn’t have, but I’m secretly very glad you did.)

This week in reviews:

Bookseller Ben McNally says Spy is “accomplished and believable. Mary Quinn and her supporting cast are developed with care and craft, and the plot is polished and quick.” Notes from a Book Addict, at BookLounge

The charmingly named NerdGirl is “on the edge of my seat waiting for the next book”!

And Ria at Tea and Tomes says the characters are “wonderfully real” and the period detail “made the story just that much more believable”.

La-la-la Launch Party!

Ying — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:27:12 +0000

I’m absolutely delighted to invite you to the official launch party for The Agency: A Spy in the House!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

7.30 pm

61 Yonge St

Portsmouth Village

Kingston, Ontario

hosted by

Candlewick Press

Novel Idea Bookstore

Body Now 4 Mums & Kids

and me!

Please RSVP if you can. For a map to the venue, click here.

Pure frivolity

Ying — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:51:28 +0000

Well, hello! I’m planning a fun new giveaway for next week that will involve Questions and Prizes. I’m also writing like fury (The Agency 3: The Traitor and the Tunnel), which means that this week instead of a thoughtful, long-cogitated, carefully written short essay in response to an FAQ, I’m bringing you a list of some of my favourite sites. Yes, this is a cheat – and a frivolous one, at that.

This is how I fritter away time on the internet at the moment:
India Knight’s Posterous: lovely, lovely things, curated for you by the Sunday Times journalist.
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century: um, self-explanatory. But curiously addictive.
The Catastrophizer: my friend Sarah Sweet, on a soapbox.
Making it Lovely: again, self-explanatory. It helps if you like pink, brown, and hand-crafted things.
The Beat that My Heart Skipped: terrific name, and new to me. We shall see how we get on.

You’ll notice a preponderance of design stuff, and nothing at all book-related. I’ll compile a list of great writing and publishing blogs another day. In the meantime, I hope I’ve persuaded you to part happily with another precious quarter-hour you’ll never get back. Hah!

“Where do you work?” & bookplates

Ying — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:00:34 +0000

I used to be one of those coffee shop people, hunched over a black coffee and rattling away at the keyboard. But no longer! For I now have a study, and it’s a delicious shade of blue (Benjamin Moore’s Yarmouth Blue, if you care), and all I have to do now is try to keep it as zen as it appears here.

Hah.

In other news, I have BOOKPLATES! These are basically large & fancy stickers with a blank space for personalization. If you’d like me to sign or inscribe your copy of The Agency but don’t think you’ll see me in person for a while, feel free to request one. You need to tell me exactly what you want the bookplate to say: just my signature? “For Pinkie, a goddess amongst mortals”? “To the winning eBay bidder”? As you can see from the foregoing examples, I’m rubbish at clever dedications, so it’s up to you. The design looks like this:

I’m a sucker for old botanical drawings. And weeds. So this was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I hope you like it, too!