Across The Universe Love

I want to tell you a story.

The beginning details of the story is fuzzy to me, but here is what I remember: a year or so ago, I got acquainted with a blogger, Beth Revis. Perhaps I knew her through her blog. Perhaps I stumbled across her on AbsoluteWrite. However it occurred, I ended up reading (maybe critiquing?) the first two chapters of a YA novel she was writing.

(this is the official cover. Love it. No words for how pretty I think it is.)

It opened with a girl going under cryogenic preservation. I was intrigued right off, by the idea of it, and by the way Beth wrote about the procedure. I'd recently started a novel about a girl who gets frozen in the same way (The Eternity Shift, on hold for the time.) So as a writer I was taking notes on how well Beth executed this--and as a reader, I was captivated by her language and the unique situation.

The next chapter moved on to a boy, Eldest, on some kind of spaceship, and his discovery that something has gone wrong on board. That was all. It was a great story. I hoped, the way you do when you read an amazing unpublished work, that someday I'd hear about it again, and this time it would be on bookshelves.

(this is the 'boy' version. The cover of Across the Universe is reversible, and the inside looks like this!)

I spent a lot of time on Goodreads looking up debut authors to interview for my blog. The one day, I stumbled across this cover that floored me. It was gorgeous. It was the kind of cover I'd daydreamed about having for Mirrorpass if I ever got published. It captured both the beauty and tragedy of space. I had to read that book.

(This was the first publicly released cover, changed later to the non-white version)

(also, I'm dumb, but until I saw this early version I didn't notice the boy and the girl kissing! I thought it was a weird cosmic portal. Hah. Now I love it even more.)

When I looked up the blurb, however, I was amazed to see it talk about a girl frozen on a ship, and even a mention of Elder/Eldest. That sounded familiar. Hadn't I read such a story once?

I followed some links, looked the author up, and realized it was in fact the book that had impressed me all that time ago--and now it was Beth Revis' Across the Universe, with a cover so startlingly beautiful, and a premise so intriguing, that I knew I had to be involved with this even in some small way. It wouldn't be published until next year, but I still emailed her asking for an interview. Which she graciously gave. And, best of all? She remembered me as well.

And so! I am gushing about Beth. I don't normally do that because oftentimes the books I look forward to end up letting me down. But if her book is anything as good as I expect it to be, as I remember it being, then it is 100% gush worthy. And it debuts today. So. Darn. Cool. Congrats Beth! Best of luck with you, your book, and your trilogy.

Beth is doing all sorts of crazy giveaways and projects, so I suggest you trip on over to her author website, or even the AcrossTheUniverse trilogy page, for more info. Or read the first chapter and see why I raved.

What's your Across the Universe story?