Y S Lee, Author of Young Adult, Historical and Mystery Novels » video!

Think you love books?

Ying — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:00:05 +0000

The mad geniuses at Type Books (which hosted my Toronto launch for The Body at the Tower) do. The proof? This absolutely charming stop-action short, showing what books get up to at night. You’d have to be a total grinch not to love this.

Go on – tell me you’re not haunted by the idea of your own books larking about in the near-dark. Mine certainly waltz, trade bookmarks, and commiserate about the recent purge.

And elsewhere on the internet, a very talented reader, Melyssa, made a painting inspired by Mary Quinn! Check it out at her Tumblr.

What are you up to this week?

Pedants unite!

Ying — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:12:00 +0000

I’m slogging away at the copyedits for Candlewick’s edition of The Traitor in the Tunnel. One of the things I love about being edited is learning new stuff. For example, did you know the difference in usage for convince and persuade? According to my anonymous but clearly passionate copy editor, “you convince someone to a point of view; you persuade someone to an action”. There you go!

And there’s eye candy this week: the delightful Enrico, who made a stunning fan book trailer for A Spy in the House, has done it again! This trailer is for The Body at the Tower and once more, it’s perfection. Thank you so much, Enrico!

The world according to Google Alerts

Ying — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:00:49 +0000

Hello, friends. Like many authors, I have Google Alerts set up for each of my book titles. The material it turns up is generally not a surprise – book reviews, Goodreads discussions, all that great stuff. But sometimes, I’m downright mystified. For example, what on earth is a “smiley-face trick”?

It doesn’t sound ominous, and yet it’s making me a bit crazy.

And then Google found a fan-made book trailer for the Agency – the first that I know of!

Who is this person? Where did she or he find all that great B&W footage? Mysterious maker of book trailers, thank you for doing such gorgeous work on this one! If you’re reading this blog post, do leave a comment!

Love and poetry

Ying — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:00:23 +0000

This week, two of my dearest friends got married. When Sarah and Steve asked me to read a poem at their ceremony, I was thrilled to be part of their wedding – as well as by the discovery of a new-to-me poem: Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You”.

Here’s O’Hara reading it:

This is the full text of the poem, at the Poetry Foundation archive.

And here’s the abbreviated version my husband & I joked about improvising, in the event that I lost my specially marked-up reading-aloud version (the one with S – L – O – W ! scrawled at the top of the page):

Having a Coke with You

(with apologies to Frank O’Hara)

is more fun than going on a bender with a Eurail Pass.

Art is all right.

But not as all right as you.

Congratulations, Sarah and Steve. I love you – and your taste in poetry.

The anti-book trailer

Ying — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:00:44 +0000

Do you like book trailers? I don’t.

I hate waiting for them to load. They assume you read ve-ry slow-ly (Stephanie Burgis’s trailer for A Most Improper Magick is the exception that proves the rule). The music is crap coming from my laptop speakers. And they don’t make me want to buy the book. Result: I almost always axe them at the 15-second mark.

So what did I do this week? Inspired by Montreal-based auteur Non-Working Monkey (warning: Monkey has a potty-mouth), I made a book trailer. Mine, however, is an anti-book trailer that contains a piece of the finest performance art ever to emerge from the bizarre tool that is Microsoft Word’s Autosummarize. Or something. Anyway, here you have it.

I’m the one in the red boots.

This week in book news:

Fight Club meets High School Debate Tournament for YA fiction! Alyssa at the Shady Glade is organizing the first ever YA Bloggers Debut Book Battle! Over the next several weeks, 24 titles will compete – and Spy is among them. Ooh. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.