Katya de Becerra | The Last Day of Normal

Today I'm pleased to host this interview with a dear friend of mine, and a fellow 2018 debut Lucia DiStefano! Lucia's debut YA novel is BORROWED and I had a pleasure to read and review an early copy - and, WOW, this book, THIS BOOK. 

Have a read, and if you feel like it, leave your impressions and well wishes to Lucia's on her debut's publication in the comments. 
About BORROWED
Love, mystery, and danger collide in this new literary thriller with the dark heart of a Gillian Flynn novel and the lyrical prose of Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun.

A triumph of authenticity, grace, and nail-biting suspense, Lucia DiStefano’s ingenious debut is an unflinching, genre-bending page-turner.

As seventeen-year-old Linnea celebrates the first anniversary of her heart transplant, she can’t escape the feeling that the wires have been crossed. After a series of unsettling dreams, inked messages mysteriously appear on her body, and she starts to wonder if this new heart belongs to her …

Hey hey hey!

If you're in Melbourne, I'm excited to tell you that autographed copies of my debut are now available in the following stores (while stock lasts!):

[and if you're not based in Melbourne, scroll down to see some info on where to get signed copies!]


Hill of Content





The Little Bookroom




Ulysses (Sandringham)



Readings St Kilda



Dymocks Melbourne CBD



Dymocks Camberwell




Readings Hawthorn



I also plan to sign some copies at Dymocks Chadstone, at three central Sydney bookstores (Abbeys, Kinokuniya, and Dymocks Sydney) as well as (potentially) a couple of central shops in Geelong.

In the US... Maybe maybe maybe I'll sign in some LA bookstores this December. MAYBE. Also, maybe I'll sign in B&N Bakersfield, also in December. Keep an eye out for announcements here and on Twitter/FB/IG.

Thank you!

Can you imagine how excited I am to be taking part in Tara Gilboy's blog tour for her Middle-Grade debut Unwritten!? VERY. I'm very excited. 

I had a pleasure of reading an early digital advanced copy of Unwritten awhile back and I loved it. A lot. It's a very unusual book that deals with the matters of good and evil as well as our evolving identity. The book also asks the question of how much our nature and nurture define us. Plus, the protagonist's voice was absolutely mesmerizing - I simply couldn't stop reading!
So today, I'm so happy to publish my Q&A with Tara and share my ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review of her debut. Plus, I was so thrilled to read Tara's book that I became its official blurber! As authors, we get asked a lot to 'blurb' new books and, even though I'm a debut myself, I was asked to blurb four books already (and I was happy to do it), but - to my knowledge - Unwritten is the first book that actually contains my blurb's words on its back…

My launch day impressions, in no particular order:)

I'm so grateful to everyone who braved the first day of hayfever-inducing Melbournian Spring to come to the Readings Kids shop in Carlton to celebrate the Australian release of my genre-bending YA debut, What The Woods Keep! 

I was absolutely blown away by how many people attended, and it was a total thrill to see my dear friends, fellow authors, co-workers, friends from Twitter/IG and just a bunch of loveliest people ever who decided to come and support a debut author!
I'm so happy that Imprint/Macmillan decided to pick up my weird, eerie, hard-to-define book 2 years ago, after it was on submission for almost a year! THANK YOU! Erin Stein, you're a dream-maker! Rhoda Belleza, I'm so grateful I got to work with you, however briefly, and of course my editor extraordinaire John Morgan - your dedication and complete and utter love for this book knows no bounds. 

And, of course, I'm so grateful that Amy Tipton offered rep…

It's finally here! It's done! My debut novel is out in the world and I'm not a published author!

I'm overwhelmed! I'm feeling surreal! I'm so happy!

Are there ever words to describe how grateful I am that readers, bloggers, reviewers, and booksellers took a chance on me, an unknown debut author? What can I even say to properly thank everyone who preordered my book, everyone who requested its early reader copies, everyone who talked it up, who reviewed it, who shouted about it on social media? I'm just . . . so freaking happy! I'm grateful and blown away and very happy. Have I said "happy" multiple times already? My bad! That's I feel - that's all!



I'm not going to replicate my massive Twitter thread here and thank all the awesome people who were involved in making WHAT THE WOODS KEEP possible, but I will say this:

If you like dark, genre-bending books, narrated by strange girls and set in mercurial eerie and rainy places, then WHAT THE…