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Danielle Younge-Ullman, author of Falling Under - our blogger for the week of 7/28:

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Danielle Younge-Ullman is our guest blogger during the week of July 28th. If you have any questions for her, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some brief information about Falling Under:

After growing up as the only child of bitterly divorced parents, Mara Foster has finally gained independence and is embarking on a promising career as an artist. But despite her success, she is fragile. Burdened by a host of fears and anxieties, Mara finds it difficult even to leave her house on most days. When Mara meets Hugo, the walls she has built around herself begin to crumble, and as she struggles to find a breakthrough both in her art and in life, she must come to terms with her own dark secrets in order to get a second chance at happiness.

Written in spare, crisp prose and marked by wry humor, Falling Under is a gripping contemporary urban tale of human weakness, friendship and hard-earned redemption. This emotionally resonant story of unexpected love marks the debut of a striking new voice in fiction.

Posted by Penguin Group USA on Fri, 07/25/2008 - 1:12pm. in

Falling Under, Danielle Younge-Ullman

Fri, 07/25/2008

Moleskine notebooks and Reporting for Generation Kill by Evan Wright:

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Shortly after I arrived at Camp Mathilda, the northern Kuwait encampment which housed my assigned subject, the Marine Corps' First Reconnaissance battalion, I was told by the commander to hand over my satellite phone. This was a relief. If I had no satellite phone, I would be unable to talk to my editor. My editor wouldn't be able to ask for a story, and I wouldn't have to explain that my computer was broken. I would just take notes, and write the stories when I returned to civilization.

I would spend nearly two months with the battalion. On previous jobs I had always carried either cheapo spiral notebooks purchased from 7/11 or long, thin reporter's notebooks. Sometimes, I carried legal pads. It wasn't until I started writing in Moleskine books--which I had scoffed at as a frilly, overpriced "Frappucino notebooks" when my sister gave them to for Christmas--that I began to notice their advantages. The spiral books would always become crushed when I carried them in my pocket. The spirals would get bent, and the pages would fall out. The Moleskine notebook was stitch-bound, and fairly indestructible, which got high points from me as we crossed the line into Iraq and entered combat.

Posted by Penguin Group USA on Fri, 07/25/2008 - 11:11am. in

Generation Kill, Evan Wright

Fri, 07/25/2008

Review of Comic-Con Preview Night, By Rachel Kempster:

I'll admit it--I wasn't feeling the Comic-Con love this year. The buzz was too big, too Hollywood, and too immense. It's been six years since I worked my first Comic-Con, and I was afraid that the crush of people and the much-hyped focus on film and TV would change the whole mood once and for all. I'm happy to report that I was wrong. The crowds are immense, and Hollywood is out in force, but the mood is excellent. The fans are brilliant. And right now I'd contend that the San Diego Convention center might just be the happiest place on earth.

DK is located in the Star Wars Pavillion this year. While the show officially started on Thursday, Wednesday night the hall opens for a few hours for all the fans with 4-day badges. There were a lot of them!

To celebrate the start of the show, we gave away limited edition art prints from our forthcoming book, Star Wars Blueprints.

The books illustrators, Chris Trevas and Chris Reiff, signed copies of the book along with the print. It rocked! We had a steady stream of fans from the moment the exhibit hall doors opened, and it didn't slow down all night. The prints were all numbered and fans were very choosy about which numbers they wanted. It's funny, at my first Comic-Con it drove me nuts when fans would up-end a pile of books to find the one in the most gleaming, pristine condition. After a few shows, I stopped getting annoyed, and this year I'm helping! Heck, I won't even put a book on display if it's got a crushed corner or scratched jacket. I love our fans--and I want them to leave the DK book happy (and loaded down with swag).