North of Beautiful Blog Stop: Bibliophile

Welcome to the fourth day of my North of Beautiful Book Blog Tour. Today's blog host of fabulosity is Jennifer Rothschild who is participating in more reading challenges than my feeble mind can keep up with! (And she wrote a hilarious Twilight poem: check her Jan 23 post.) Be the first to answer Jennifer's posted question on Bibliophile, and you'll win an autographed copy of North of Beautiful.

Here's a tidbit from our chat:

Sarah: Did you start geocaching before it became one of Jacob's hobbies, or did it move from the book into the rest of your life?

Justina: Years ago, I had read about geocaching—high tech treasure hunting using a GPS—in an article. It later occurred to me that geocaching could be symbolic of Terra’s controlling mapmaker of a father who tries to box her into a grid and the boy who uses maps to break open her world. So in the name of research, I bought a GPS, created an account at www.geocaching.com, and hauled my kids on an expedition. We were hooked!


To read the whole interview, please visit Jennifer's blog at www.tushuguan.blogspot.com.


NEXT UP

Feb 6, Friday
Teen Book Review with Jocelyn Pearce
www.teenbookreview.wordpress.com

North of Beautiful Blog Stop: Shelf Elf

New postergirl for readergirlz, Shelf Elf, is hosting me on the second stop of my North of Beautiful Book Blog tour. Be the first to answer Shelf Elf's posted question, and you'll win an autographed copy of North of Beautiful.

Here's a tidbit from our chat:

Shelf Elf: Your novel is a bit like Terra's artwork, since it is almost a "story-collage" of rich and surprising subjects: port-wine stains, geocaching, the art of coffee tasting, cartography and international adoption. I'm interested to understand how you began to make a story out of all of those topics.

Justina: North of Beautiful is a patchwork quilt of several epic journeys. (Read: several manuscripts that never came to fruition.) So much research I’ve done over the years for other potential stories finally made it into a book! For instance, I had been working on a non-fiction book eight years ago and interviewed the coffee buyer for Starbucks, Mary Williams.

To read the whole interview, please visit Shelf Elf's blog at www.shelfelf.wordpress.com.

NEXT UP
Feb 4, Wednesday
Archimedes Forgets with Sarah Rettger
www.sarahrettger.blogspot.com

Feb 5, Thursday
Bibliophile with Jennifer Rothschild
www.tushuguan.blogspot.com

Feb 6, Friday
Teen Book Review with Jocelyn Pearce
www.teenbookreview.wordpress.com