Author Guest Post: Elizabeth Rudnick & Giveaway

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 |
Elizabeth Rudnick

Books (Young Adult):
  • Tweet Heart

Links:

Elizabeth Rudnick:
Elizabeth Rudnick is a debut author who also is a senior edit at Disney Press in New York City. She's edited books based on movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and Prince of Persia as well as Miley Cyrus's memoir, Miles to Go, which was a New York Times bestseller.

She lives in Connecticut with a bug mutt named Jack Dyson. He has the ability to suck up anything in his way and has a habit of watching hours of mindless television!

Tweet Heart:
Claire is a #hopelessromantic. Lottie is determined to set up her BFF with Mr. Perfect. Will wants his #secretcrush to finally notice him. Bennett is a man with a plan.

Claire can’t believe it when her dream guy starts following her on Twitter. She never thought he noticed her, and suddenly he seems to understand her better than almost anyone.

But the Twitterverse can be a confusing place, especially when friends act differently online than they do in person. Things get even more complicated when Claire realizes she’s falling for someone else, the last person she ever would have expected….
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How Tweet Heart Was Born

First, I just want to say thank Mavie, for asking me to write about my experience working on Tweet Heart. It was such fun--and yes, at times, quite painful--so it is always nice when people want to hear about how it all came about.

I guess, I’ll start with the beginning--how did I come up with the idea to write a book in all tweets, emails, and blogs? And the answer is--I got dumped. Silly, I know. But people are always saying write what you know and in this case, I knew exactly what it was like to like someone from afar who, for all intents and purposes, would never like me back. Or, if he did, he’d manage to break my heart. So, yes, I had been recently dumped and was sitting on my couch discussing it with my then roommate. I was going through all the great things the guy had said while we were dating and mentioned that in one of our first emails, he had said that I made him feel twitterpaited. And suddenly, lightning struck. I thought out loud, wouldn’t it be funny if there was a love story told all in tweets? A courtship limited to 140 characters? What if it were called Tweet Heart? And so the idea was born.

Of course, I quickly found out that having a title and a gleam of an idea doesn’t a book make. I fleshed out the idea--I wanted it to have some sort of hook besides the tweet factor and I also wanted it to have some nods to classic literature given that it was based on such a modern technology. The novel Cyrano de Bergerac was where I landed. It is a story about mistaken identity and I just modernized it to make it a story of mistweeten identity. Claire was the first character to come to life and I will admit, she is probably the most like me (though I think Bennett and I share some qualities as well!). It definitely wasn’t easy writing the book and where I started and what was printed are worlds apart. For example, originally, I was just going to write in all tweets but I quickly discovered that it is hard to move a story along when you are only really allowed to work in “dialogue”. That was where the blogs and emails came in. They are how I helped move the plot along and then relied on the tweets as the conversations. And let me tell you, for someone as wordy as me, limiting those conversations to 140 character interactions was tough! I spent a LOT of time going back and cutting and trying to come up with clever ways to shorten thoughts. But it was worth it because I think, or hope rather, that in the end, the novel speaks to the way teens think and speak today. It is a book in their language and the responses I’ve gotten make me feel like I succeeded in getting that voice across. For the most part that is :)

The one thing I did want to do, along with creating a compelling and entertaining story (with its own staircase moment because I’m still waiting for mine so why not live vicariously through my characters?), was to also address the fact that things like twitter or email or IMs or blogs--they are great and can be wonderful ways of communicating, but they can also lead to more drama than is necessary. Will is the perfect example. He was happier living behind his computer and telling Claire how he felt online but that backfired. If he had been up front with her and talked to her face-to-face, he probably would have saved himself a lot of heartache. Don’t get me wrong, I rely on email a lot to get across thoughts to friends and loved ones. But we should never forget that sometimes, good old fashioned talking can be more rewarding. :)

Thanks again Mavie!! I hope your readers are all as twitterpaited with Tweet Heart as you were!
____________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks so much to Elizabeth for stopping by! I really loved Tweet Heart and I hope you readers will too!

I also have a signed copy of Tweet Heart up for grabs! Thanks to Elizabeth for donating!!

Official Information:
  • fill out the form below
  • November 17 is the deadline
  • open to everyone
  • entrants must be 13 years or older
  • check my contest policy
  • contest closed - winner announced

10 comments:

iffath said...

Fantastic post, Elizabeth! Tweet Heart sounds like such a fantastic book, I'm really liking the whole 'Twitterverse' idea!

Will look out for this :D

Laura Flanagan said...

It seems to me a good idea for a book. So much technologies in this crazy world!! ;)

Precious said...

Great post! I enjoyed reading it. Thank you for the giveaway!

Darlyn said...

I've seen the book somewhere around blogsphere and absolutely adored the theme. Thanks for the giveaway too!

Lisa_Gibson said...

Sounds like a great read. Thanks for the interview. :)
Lisa ~ YA Literature Lover

Dani said...

Thank you so much for the giveaway =D


Jaz.parks

Jacinda (The Reading Housewives) said...

I love the description of the book! :)

Fi-chan said...

thank you! :D

Pisinat said...

Twitter is such a (too) big part of my life now! I feel like I could really identify myself to this book. Elizabeth Rudnick had a really great idea writing this book :)

cheekychann said...

my daugter would love this book.

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