Now a Major Motion Picture
Author: Cori McCarthy
Release Date: April 3, 2018
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Description:
Their fantasy is her reality in this bright and uplifting contemporary coming-of-age novel by the acclaimed author of Breaking Sky and You Were Here.
Iris
Thorne wants to blaze her own path. That’s easier said than done when
you’re the granddaughter of M. E. Thorne, famous author of the Elementia
series, hailed as the feminist response to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of
the Rings. And with a major motion picture adaptation of her
grandmother’s books in the works, Iris can say goodbye to her dream of
making her own way in the music industry.
So
when Iris and her brother get invited to the film set in Ireland, she’s
pretty sure the trip will be a nightmare. Except Iris can’t deny the
rugged beauty of the Irish countryside. And brushing shoulders with the
hot, young cast isn’t awful, especially the infuriatingly charming lead,
Eamon O’Brien. Iris even finds the impassioned female director
inspiring. But when the filming falls into jeopardy, everything Iris
thought she knew about Elementia—and herself—is in question. Will making
a film for the big screen help Iris to see the big picture?
Praise for Now a Major Motion Picture:
“A war cry and a love letter all at once.”–Kirkus
“This is simultaneously a whimsical teen romance and an emotionally compelling story about family, creativity, and courage.”— School Library Journal
“Joyful
and authentic. With a vivid cast of unique characters, the story is
engrossing, right down to the sometimes wryly self-referential, on-point
chapter titles.” –Booklist
Book Links:
Amazon
Other Works by Cori McCarthy:
Breaking Sky
Author: Cori McCarthy
Release Date: March, 2015
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Summary:
To save her country, Chase must put everything on the line. Including her pride. And her heart.
Chase
Harcourt, call sign "Nyx", isn't one to play it safe. In 2048, America
is locked in the second cold war—and the country's best hope is the
elite teen fighter pilots of the United Star Academy. Chase is one of
only two daredevil pilots chose to fly an experimental "Streaker" jet.
All anyone cares about is that Chase aces the upcoming Streaker trails,
proving the prototype jet can knock the enemy out of the sky. Only few
know the pain and loneliness of her past.
As
the world tilts toward war, Chase discovers a military secret. There's a
third Streaker, and it's young pilot, Tristan, can match her on the
ground and in the clouds. Chase doesn't play well with others, but to
save her country, she'll have to put her life in the hands of the
competition.
Breaking Sky is a
gritty coming of age tale with tons of action, a fascinating dystopian
society, humor, friendship, romance and heart-stopping, high-stakes
flying that will leave you on the edge of your seat.
Buy Links for Breaking Sky:
BooksAMillion- http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Breaking-Sky/Cori-McCarthy/9781492621126?id=6538300475571
Indiebound- https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781492621126
You Were Here
Author: Cori McCarthy
Release Date: March, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Summary:
Cori McCarthy delivers an emotionally taut page-turner perfect for fans of E. Lockhart, Jennifer Niven, and Jandy Nelson.
Jaycee is about to accomplish what her older brother Jake couldn't: live past graduation.
Jaycee
is dealing with her brother's death the only way she can – by
re-creating Jake's daredevil stunts. The ones that got him killed. She's
not crazy, okay? She just doesn't have a whole lot of respect for
staying alive.
Jaycee
doesn't expect to have help on her insane quest to remember Jake. But
she's joined by a group of unlikely friends – all with their own reasons
for completing the dares and their own brand of dysfunction: the
uptight, ex-best friend, the heartbroken poet, the slacker with Peter
Pan syndrome, and... Mik. He doesn't talk, but somehow still challenges
Jayce to do the unthinkable-reveal the parts of herself that she buried
with her brother.
Cori McCarthy's
gripping narrative defies expectation, moving seamlessly from prose to
graphic novel panels and word art poetry. From the petrifying ruins of
an insane asylum to the skeletal remains of the world's largest
amusement park, You Were Here takes you on an unforgettable journey of friendship, heartbreak, and inevitable change.
Buy Links for You Were Here:
BooksAMillion- http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Were-Here/Cori-McCarthy/9781492617044?id=6538300475571
Indiebound- https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781492635918
I Don’t Want to Alarm Anyone, but There’s an Elf at Baggage Claim
The guy was probably a painter. Possibly a drummer.
College
age and wearing all black, he’d been the unique focus of my
thousand-hour red-eye. My inflight boyfriend. It was a torrid, imaginary
romance. We’d gone on at least a dozen dates and told adorable
anecdotes to our future children about how their parents met a few miles
in the air.
Now we were no longer separated by two Aer Lingus seats. We were shoulder to shoulder, dazedly watching the baggage belt spin. Just say hi. Ask him something.
I hugged the neck of my guitar case. “Do you know the time?”
He checked a large, silver watch. “Half twelve.”
“What?”
I blurted. The bags began to emerge, and I was suddenly under new
pressure to break the ice before we parted ways. After all, an entire
transatlantic daydream depended on it. “Is that six? Eleven thirty? I’m
so jet-lagged it could be either.”
“Twelve thirty.” His Irish accent made his words feel like lyrics to a decent song.
“Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. Half of twelve is six.” I smiled.
“Americans,” he muttered with a snicker.
And
he continued snickering as he reached for a suitcase, leaving me with
the unparalleled awkwardness of being embarrassed by and disappointed in
a complete stranger. I’d mentally dumped him four exotic ways—my
favorite involving a baseball stadium video screen—by the time my little
brother came running back from the bathroom.
“Iris!” Ryder yelled. “I peed for like two whole minutes. I should’ve timed it!”
The
baggage claim crowd parted for him—people tend to do that when
someone’s yelling about their urine. Now I really felt like a gross
American. Thanks, Ireland. We’re off to a great start.
“Eleven days,” I murmured. “Only eleven days.”
Ryder
showed no sign of jet lag. He wrestled a foam fantasy axe out of his
backpack, spilling weapons everywhere. He then engaged imaginary
opponents in fierce battle while the people from our flight continued to
back away. My ex-in-flight boyfriend even gave him a dirty look—before
giving me a dirtier look.
“I’m not his mom, you know,” I said as I collected Ryder’s weapons off the floor.
A
well-meaning Irish granny stepped up. “Is this your first time in
Ireland?” she asked Ryder, placing a steadying hand on his shoulder. My
brother nodded and squirmed. I checked my desire to tell her that, in
America, we don’t touch kids we don’t know, but I didn’t want to call
more attention to our swiftly amassing cultural differences. “Are you
going to see the Giant’s Causeway? Or the Cliffs of Moher?”
“No,”
Ryder said, breaking free from her hold. “We get to meet famous people
and help out on set and probably even get bit roles.”
“No bit roles, Ry. You know that,” I said.
McGranny looked to me for an explanation. I zipped up Ryder’s backpack and said it fast. “He means the adaptation for Elementia. They’re filming here for the next two weeks. We’ve been invited to…” What were we supposed to do? “Watch, I guess.”
“Our
grandma wrote that book!” Ryder said so loud we now had an even larger
audience. Everyone who’d been groggily waiting to claim their luggage
had tuned in.
“Excuse
me?” My ex-love was back in the picture, not snickering this time. “Did
you say your grandmother was the author M. E. Thorne?” The spark in his
eyes seemed desperate to rekindle our imaginary flame.
Get out of your own head, Iris.
“Yeah,” I managed.
“Have I got something to show you.” He started to take off his shirt.
“Oh, for the love of…” I whispered, staring down at my red Chucks.
“Look!” Ryder proclaimed. “Iris, look! He’s got the map of Elementia on his ribs!”
I had to peek. It was an awfully big map. Alas, my curiosity was rewarded by a rich paleness smattered in black chest hair.
He put his shirt back down and smiled, but I kept hearing the way he’d grumbled Americans.
“So are you excited about the film adaptation?” he asked. “Are you
having a hand in its development? How do you feel about them changing
the ages of the characters?”
I
braided my hair back and said nothing, reminded once again of my life’s
golden rule. People usually treated me one of two ways. One: like I was
M. E. Thorne’s granddaughter, gifted with an otherworldly glow. Two: no
one. I’d give anything for a third option.
“This
is all you talk about, isn’t it?” he continued. “You’ve probably been
reading your grandma’s books since you were a kid. I discovered them a
few years back. Then again, I bet you can’t say anything because of the
movies. Top-secret insider information, right?”
I
chewed on my response. The gristle of this fantasy talk would not go
down. Everyone assumed I’d be over the moon about the adaptation, but it
meant the story’s fandom would triple. Quadruple. Soon everyone would
revise their interest in me, just like this guy.
“Ryder,
see if that’s our bag,” I said, moving us to the other side of the
carousel. When I had my back to everyone from our flight, I squeezed my
eyes, a little scream coming up from deep inside.
“You
okay, Iris?” Ryder put a hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes. Not his
hand—it was his foam dwarf axe. At least his little-kid expression was
earnest.
“I’m
fine.” I rested my forehead on the top of my guitar case. I knew better
than to check out when I was on Ryder duty, but I couldn’t help it. One
moment later, my brother was lunging for his luggage, and the next, he
was on the carousel, disappearing through the plastic hanging strips and
into the bowels of Shannon Airport. “Hey!” I yelled. “Ryder!” Fear
slapped me awake, and I almost crawled through the plastic strips after
him. “Hey!”
“Need some help, then?”
I turned toward a new Irish voice and almost fell over. “Oh no.”
The boy had elf ears. Honest to God, pointy and flexed into his hairline elf ears.
“Oh no?” he returned, his eyebrows sky-high.
“What’re you… What are you?”
“I’m
an elf,” he said as casually as if he were telling me he was an art
major. “I’m here to give you a lift.” He held up a printed sign that
read Thorne.
“Put
that down. These people are already too curious.” I grabbed the paper
and balled it. “And if you’re here to help, solve that equation.” I
pointed to the baggage exit. “One brother went in. No brothers are
coming back out. He’s probably on the runway by now.”
“Ye
of little faith,” Elf Ears said, crossing his arms. “He’ll pop back
through in a moment.” He leaned over conspiratorially. “It’s a circle,
you know.”
I
couldn’t believe that a stranger with artificial ears was “ye of little
faith”-ing me. “What if security catches him? In the United States, the
TSA confiscates firstborns for this kind of thing.”
On
cue, Ryder came back through the plastic strips, sitting on my duffel
and wearing my sunglasses he’d pillaged from the outer pocket. He knew
he was in trouble, and yet he grinned. Then he saw the guy beside me,
and his mouth dropped open. Ryder jumped down and ran over, leaving me
to fetch both of our bags from the carousel.
By the time I’d returned, Ryder’s face was a full moon of excitement. “Iris. This is Nolan. Nolan.”
Nolan held out his hand as though we hadn’t previously met, i.e., argued. “It’s Eamon. Eamon O’Brien.”
I dropped Ryder’s bag to shake Eamon’s hand. “What a name. Did you spring from the roots of Ireland itself?”
I had to hand it to him—he didn’t flinch.
“And you’re Iris Thorne. Nothing to slag there, right?”
Ryder pulled on my shirt, revealing way too much of my bra, while hissing, “It’s Nolan.”
I
grabbed his hand and yanked up my neckline. “Stop it or I’ll snap your
dwarf axe over my knee.” I plucked my sunglasses off Ryder’s face and
put them on in time to catch quite possibly the dirtiest look an elf has
ever given a human. “Oh, come on. I don’t really break his toys. And
how come there are three of us, but I’m carrying all the bags?”
“It’s not a toy,” Ryder snipped. “It’s a costume replica.”
Eamon
continued to glare, proving his eyes weren’t blue but a crystal color
that felt digitally enhanced. No wonder he’d been cast as the famous elf
in Grandma Mae’s books. Nolan—Eamon—whatever his name was threw the
strap of my huge duffel over his shoulder and tried to take my guitar.
“Don’t even think about it,” Ryder said for me. “She’s married to that thing.”
“Is that legal in America these days? Do you share health care?”
I
stuck out my tongue, and Eamon grinned wildly, which encouraged me to
put my tongue away and wonder how he’d reduced me to Ryder’s maturity
level in a matter of minutes.
We passed under the green banner of Nothing to Declare, and I tried some light conversation. “So, if you’re one of the actors, why are you doing airport pickups?”
“I volunteered. I’m a huge fan.”
Good Lord.
“Hey, I read about you,” Ryder said. “This is your very first movie!”
I couldn’t help myself. “Then how’d you get the role?”
“That’s a fine story. I love Elementia.
It’s in my blood. I first read it with my mam when I was, oh, about
this high.” He held his hand to Ryder’s head, making my brother beam.
“When they announced the movie and open casting, Mam and I decided to
dream big. We made an audition video in a wooded bit on Saint Stephen’s
Green.”
“Elijah Wood did that to become Frodo,” Ryder said.
“Right,
right.” He knocked Ryder’s shoulder, best friends already. “I thought,
if it worked for Elijah, why can’t it work with me?”
“Because Elijah Wood had an established film career before he did that,” I muttered.
“What was that?” Eamon asked.
“Nothing.”
I knew where this story was going. Without a doubt, it would conclude
with “then I met the grandchildren of M. E. Thorne and it was the most
magical thing to ever happen to me.”
Eamon
continued. “Lo and behold, I’m cast as Nolan. And today I’m getting fit
for my ears when Cate Collins, wonder director, needs someone to pick
up M. E. Thorne’s grandchildren. I volunteered, quick as light.” Eamon
shifted the bag on his shoulder and glanced at me. “This is when I meet a tiny, axe-wielding hero and his mountain troll of a guardian.”
My guitar case slipped out of my hand, banging hollowly on the ground. “What the…”
Ryder’s smile was wider than both of the hands he used to cover it.
“Pardon
that.” Eamon winked at me—the sassiest thing I’d ever seen a guy
manage. “I’m prone to descriptive exaggeration, me springing outta the
roots of Ireland and all.”
I blushed, an odd mixture of offended and ashamed.
“Iris Thorne!” an unfamiliar voice yelled from behind.
I
turned, my pulse turning into a drum. Just like there were two ways
people treated me, there were two kinds of Elementia fans: the ones who
loved the trilogy—and the ones who’d reconstructed their lives for it.
The latter group called themselves Thornians. They wrote letters to my family. They knew my birthday.
And one of them tried to abduct Ryder when he was six.
I
was sort of relieved to see it was my ex-in-flight boyfriend, the newly
redubbed Mr. Nerdy Torso Tattoo, jogging over. “How do you know my
name?” I asked, my voice breaking a little as I put out an arm to keep
him from getting too close to Ryder.
“Your brother was yelling it. I didn’t even know M. E. Thorne had young grandkids.”
I relaxed slightly. “I’m not that young.”
“I’m
crossing my fingers you’re eighteen.” The guy leaned close with
flirtatious wickedness, reminding me of what had drawn my attention to
him during the flight. Lanky gorgeousness. The glasses. Blue eyes. Dark,
tight swirls of hair. He rested a long-fingered hand on the top of my
guitar case. Definitely musician’s fingers. Also, it was suddenly quite
obvious that I’d been wrong; he was well beyond college age.
Earth to Iris. Walk away, Iris.
“I’m…seventeen.” I stepped back, oddly relieved to bump into Eamon. “Have to go.”
The guy pulled out his wallet and handed me a business card. “Shoot me a message around your birthday. I’ll take you out, and we can talk about the movie, or the books, if you prefer.”
Neither, thank you. “I live in LA.”
“I’ll
make the trip.” He smiled at the person he thought was me. He walked
away. And I hated M. E. Thorne more than usual, which, to be honest, was
already a lot.
We walked toward the parking lot, and I kept my head down.
“You work fast, Lady Iris,” Eamon said, low enough that Ryder couldn’t hear.
“No
way,” I muttered back. “That guy has the hots for my dead grandma.” He
glanced at me, concerned. “I’m fine,” I added, hoping I looked
annoyed—bold and unflappable—but from the way his expression fell, I
think maybe my sad was showing.
CORI MCCARTHY
studied poetry and screenwriting before falling in love with writing for
teens at Vermont College of Fine Arts. From a military family, Cori was
born on Guam and lived a little bit of everywhere before she landed in
Michigan. Learn more about her books at CoriMcCarthy.com.
Social Media Links:
Website: http://www.corimccarthy.com/
Twitter: @CoriMcCarthy
Instagram: @cori_mccarthy
(2) Copies of Now a Major Motion Picture
Runs April 3rd – 30th (US & Canada only)
Runs April 3rd – 30th (US & Canada only)
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