Okay, yes, I have a thing for Faerie/Fairy Books, you can have your sparkly Vampires (Oh, I will finish the Twilight Series…um, someday, Book three keeps sitting there all big and filled with Sullen Cullen, but someday!) So I think I will be loving “Ballad” when it comes out. I know some of my BEA pals picked up “Shiver” and I’ve only heard good things so far. And yes, this book SOUNDS AWESOME:

Nuala is part muse, part psychic vampire. While the freedom to sing or write or create is denied her, her mark across history is unmistakable: a trail of brilliant poets, musicians, and artists who have died tragically young. She has no sympathy for their abbreviated life spans; every thirteen Halloweens she burns in a bonfire and rises from her ashes with no memories of what has come before other than the knowledge of how her end will come.

James is the best bagpiper in the state of Virginia—maybe in the country—plus he’s young and good-looking: just Nuala’s thing. But James, supremely confident in his own abilities and in love with another girl, becomes the first to ever reject Nuala’s offer. He’s preoccupied with bigger things than Nuala: an enigmatic horned figure who appears at dusk and the downward spiral of Dee, his girlfriend-who-isn’t.

It becomes obvious to James that Nuala’s presence, the horned king of the dead, and Dee’s slow self-destruction are all related, and that Dee is the center of a deadly faerie game. While James struggles to unwind the tangled threads of the story, Nuala shadows him, seeing her conflicted, dual nature reflected back at her in him. She finds herself lending him inspiration for nothing. Not quite for nothing—for the hope of requited affection. But even as James begins to realize his feelings for both Dee and Nuala have changed, the thirteenth Halloween descends, with its bonfires and rituals for the dead, one deadly to Nuala and the other to Dee. James can only save one.

But I think what I love the most is that Youtube video. I always wanted to be able to draw, but I can’t very well, I can’t even hold my pencil right or draw a straight line, and I have no musical ability….ask my piano teacher, ask my music teacher if I rocked out the Flute-a-phone (I did not), ask my band director who told me it was pointless to continue flute lessons about 3 weeks in. I have talents, the musical arts aren’t one of them, nor the visual arts. But man, I can appreciate.

This is one worth appreciating. In general though, this idea of Book Trailers is so cool! While the ones done by bloggers and authors are amazing, there is also this super cool trend of kids doing them, I know many Librarians are using digital media in the classroom with students, and the results are so creative, but I also noticed that some students are making their own fan videos and fan trailers for books, just BECAUSE. This makes me want to jump up and down!

Oh, and here is the one she made for SHIVER. Amazing right?

I’m so jealous of artistic-ness *whines some more*

I think, while we all know I love YOUTUBE more than most other things, it would be sort of fun to see Book Trailers on the TV mixed in the movie trailers, or before a movie during the PREVIEWS. Am I getting crazy now?