It's a new year for The Contemps!

A little over a year ago, The Contemps shouted to the world, "We're here, we're here!"

And what a great year it's been! Over the past twelve months, we spotlighted many GREAT contemporary YA novels, and discussed lots of interesting topics, from the silly, like Ugg boots, to the serious, like binge drinking.

I want to thank ALL of the authors who participated over the past 12 months in bringing you interesting and entertaining blog posts. I also want to thank all of the readers who stopped by and commented. And even if you're too busy to comment, thanks so much for reading!

The group was my brain child, and so in June, it was time for me to decide what to do with the blog. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I don't have any books coming out in 2012. No one else was able to step up and be the coordinator, so it was up to me. And I understand - authors are busy, busy people, with deadlines, and writing to pay the bills must always take precedence over coordinating people and writing blog posts! After much consideration (and yes, one or two sleepless nights), I decided to stay on, but would take the blog in a slightly different direction.

Rather than a new group of authors with books releasing over the course of twelve months, we'd go the way of contributors and narrow the focus a bit.

Our goal is to be THE resource on the web for contemporary YA fiction. If you are a teacher, a librarian, an editor, or a reader, we hope you'll stop by often to see what's new in contemporary fiction. With the help of eight other writers, we're going to shine the spotlight on 8-10 YA contemporary titles per month, usually ones that are releasing that month or the following month. We'll be spotlighting books on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We may occasionally blog on Thursdays as well, if we have something we really want to talk about!

To help you as much as possible with your book buying, we now have a release calendar on the web site, so you can see a list of contemporary titles releasing over the course of the month.

Here are the contributors, aka the authors and bloggers giving up sleep or television or cupcake baking time to tell you all about the wonderful contemporary novels being released over the next year:

April Henry
Janet Gurtler
Denise Jaden
Lindsey Leavitt
Lisa Schroeder
Lydia Sharp
Kristina Springer
Sara Bennett Wealer
Alecia Whitaker

This blog is a labor of love. We are here because we LOVE, with a capital L, contemporary YA fiction! We hope you'll support the authors bringing you the content and buy their books (located on the sidebar). And if you can help us by tweeting our blog posts or telling your colleagues about our blog, that would be great too.

Here's to a fabulous year of reading and books!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad The Contemps will be continuing - this blog is such a great resource and can't wait for more b/c I also LOVE contemp YA!

Denise Jaden said...

Yay, for the continuing Contemps! I can't wait for some of the books we are spotlighting this year!!

Alecia Whitaker said...

So excited to be part of this blog!

Alix said...

I'm glad your continuing and I love the release calendar idea, very useful.

April Henry said...

There are so many good contemporary books out there.

Micol Ostow said...

Sad to be passing on the torch (my next book is -- gasp! -- just a touch paranormal), but so excited that the blog lives on! (And I can vouch for newbie Awhit!)

Ashley said...

I'm so excited! This sounds like an awesome direction to take the blog, and you (Lisa at least) know how much I LOVE Contemporary! Seriously LOVE it! :D Can't wait to hear more from you guys!

Tiffany Schmidt said...

I was a big fan last year and you've got a great new line-up and game plan Can't wait to see what the new Contemps do this year.

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