Lauren Beukes, author of Broken Monsters, has announced that she will be taking part in the Twitter Fiction Festival this year. This is the third time the festival, which is held entirely on Twitter, will take place. Beukes was part of the festival, curating

Authors and ordinary people take part in the celebration of writing and creative story-telling. This year high-profile participants include Chuck Wendig, author of The Cormorant and a number of horror, fantasy and science fiction books and screenplays; and prolific prize-winning poet and novelist and most recently author of MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood. Other featured authors include Jackie Collins, Lemony Snicket, Beth Cato, Eric Jerome Dikey, Celeste Ng and Ian Doesche.

View Beukes’ Facebook post in which she shared the news:

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The 2015 Twitter Fiction Festival takes place online from 11 to 15 May. An open call for submissions to be featured as a participant will be made on March 2nd and the entire twitterspehere is invited to “create fiction on the spot” using the hashtag #TwitterFiction.

Stay updated by following @TWfictionfest on Twitter:

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• Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
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  EAN: 9781415202005
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“How should we tell this story?”

Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+) journalist, and author of The Thunder That Roars, Imran Garda recently asked this very important question about how media coverage of events relating to the militant Islamic group ISIS should be handled.

Garda explains the manipulative nature of the images and videos the group allows the international media to see, and further asks how media organisations, such as Al Jazeera, should report on ISIS if the only material they have is fed to them by the group themselves, and independent journalists on the ground are killed left, right and centre. “If this is our generation’s information war, how do we win?” Garda asks.

“What ISIS does is of significant news value, but we don’t want to be their megaphone,” Garda says, after sharing the different ways in which ISIS have tried to alter public opinion of them, from posting selfies with cats on Twitter to broadcasting brutal murders.

Executive editor of AJ+ Bob Calo joins Garda to explain why the network has decided to no longer react to propaganda from ISIS: “We are talking about it without being part of the theatrical presentation.”

Watch the video:

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• The Thunder That Roars by Imran Garda
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  EAN: 9781415207123
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When Lauren Beukes left the United States after her book tour recently she revealed on Twitter that a TV deal was “in the works” for Broken Monsters. Now Book Riot’s Jenn Northington has put together a dream cast for the potential show.

Beukes says there are still “dots and crosses to be made” on the TV deal, but Broken Monsters fans will agree that the book is imminently filmable.
 
 

Book Riot’s as-yet-imaginary cast includes Rosario Dawson as Detective Gabriella Versado; Amandla Stenberg, of Hunger Games fame, as Layla; Vincent D’Onofrio as Clayton and Devon Sawa as Jonno:

This douche-nozzle of a journalist is a bit harder, just because there are so many decent choices. I almost picked James Franco, but then I’d really never be able to watch the show. Sawa captures the “slightly hotter than average, slightly scruffy, but still cute enough to get what he wants” look that I imagine for Jonno.

• Complete article: Book Riot

Beukes wrote a response on her blog:

I love, love, love her suggestions – especially Clayton. I think they’re spot on and I’ve actually forwarded it to the awesome production company who have optioned the rights, but who I can’t talk about just yet.

• Complete article: laurenbeukes.com

Which Northington responded to on Twitter, and Beukes retweeted. Ah, the glories of social media:

In other exciting news, Beukes has announced that she will be doing a Reddit AMA (“ask me anything”, a form of Q&A with users of the popular-if-slightly-underground social network) on Thursday. Don’t miss it!

Book details

• Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
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  EAN: 9781415202005
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Lauren Beukes has been making waves on Twitter, getting a rave review from Stephen King of her latest book, Broken Monsters, while also participating in an Exclusive Books Twitter Town Hall, which had the social network buzzing with excitement.

Legendary American horror author King became an instant Twitter celebrity when he opened up his account in December last year, and has quickly amassed almost half a million followers. King, who recently recommended Sarah Lotz’ new novel The Three, has apparently developed a taste for South African genre fiction.

Yesterday he tweeted some high praise of Broken Monsters, receiving almost 500 retweets and over 1 200 favourites, consequently deeming Beukes, who had just arrived in London for the Nine Worlds Geekfest, “speechless” (although not tweetless).

Meanwhile, Beukes also participated in an Exclusive Books Twitter Town Hall, during which fans could ask the author questions and follow the discussion at the hashtag #EBTownHall. Beukes chatted about the research she undertook for Broken Monsters, her favourite authors, and even offered some writing advice, saying: “Writing advice? Finish the damn book. Nothing else matters. MAKE the time. If this matters to you, do it.”

• Follow Exclusive Books (@exclusivescoza) and Lauren Beukes (@laurenbeukes) for more

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• Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
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  EAN: 9781415202005
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Charlie Human has just launched his debut novel, Apocalypse Now Now, and Men’s Health caught up with him on Twitter for an interview.

Human listed Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Perdido Street Station by China Mieville and Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan as the books he’d most like Apocalypse Now Now to share a bookshelf with and he named Anton Yelchin as a good candidate to play the role of Baxter if the book were to be made into a film.

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• Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human
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  EAN: 9781415201862
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Exclusives.co.za organised a “Twitter Town Hall” yesterday with Lauren Beukes for a live discussion of her new book, The Shining Girls.

People made use of the #ShiningGirls hashtag to send Beukes their questions, which she answered for an hour. The discussion ranged from her description of how the press tour is going: “manic, full-time writer dream-life stuff”, to advice on writing and getting published: “Writers write. Sit your ass down, put fingers to keyboard. Make stories. Nothing else matters.”

Exclusives collected the tweets using Storify:

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• The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
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  EAN: 9781415202012
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Last night, Books LIVE’s Ben Williams tweeted from a book preview event for The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, held in Johannesburg.

Journalist Nechama Brodie (@brodiegal) spoke to Beukes about the genesis of The Shining Girls, writing about violence against women and violent women, and the research she conducted for the book:

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Book details

• The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
  EAN: 9780007464562
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Lauren Beukes visited the Random House Struik offices in Johannesburg this morning and discussed her upcoming novel, The Shining Girls.

Random House Struik tweeted the interview as Beukes talked about the impact that winning the Arthur C Clarke award has had on her career and described the plot of her book, which involves a time-travelling serial killer:

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Book details

• The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
  EAN: 9780007464562
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In the middle of my livetweeting of the Random House Struik trade presentation this evening – the event was a look ahead at the books the group will be bringing out this year and next – a lengthy Twitter blackout occurred, after which I began again with slightly different search keys (by accident). So this livetweeting is one of two halves. Here’s the second (latter) half of the evening:
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