Today, starting at 7:30pm Eastern Time/4:30pm Pacific Time, TheFandom.net is going to be hosting another Google Hangout!  If you missed our very first episode, don’t worry, you wouldn’t have needed to see it before watching this one to understand what’s going on.

But you certainly won’t want to miss tonight’s hangout, because we’ll be announcing some cool giveaways to help officially launch the new sites that have been basically transferred from tfgeekgirl.com to their own fandom!

We’ll be announcing the prizes and how you can enter each one as well as some news from our various fandoms.

Then we’ll get into discussing what’s going on in some of our busy fandoms, including movie news for some (Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Mortal Instruments, Ender’s Game, Percy Jackson) as well as TV and book news for others (Harry Potter, Delirium, Game of Thrones).

And we’re going to talk about some events that are or will be taking place in the very near future, so we hope you can join us tonight at 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT.

Look for our tweet for the YouTube link by following @fandomnet, or go to The Fandom’s YouTube channel.

Registration is only $10. Participation includes music listening/discussions, session viewing/participation, authors interviews/Q&A as well as musical viewings.

The series that will be taking part in this convention are The Hunger Games, Divergent, Delirium, and Matched. Authors able to be interviewed are Ally Condie, Lauren Oliver, V. Arrow, and Mark Oshiro. There will also be a period of time where all recored sessions will be available after the live convention.

There will also be some session leader availabilities if you are interested.

Be sure to register in time!

Shi Cheng, China, photo by Chinese National Geography.

Ally Condie has made a major announcement on her personal website! As reported by the Children’s Book Council, Ally Condie is planning on taking us from a futuristic land to an imagined, complex underwater world! Ally informs fans on her blog post that she is staying with the same team that she worked with while writing and publishing Matched, Crossed and Reached.

So far, Ally has signed on for two books to be published. The first book does not have a working title yet, so Ally is referring to it as “The Rio Book.” Here’s an excerpt of Ally’s (spoiler-free) edited version of the official press release:

The first book, scheduled for publication in fall 2014, tells the story of Rio, who has waited her whole life for the opportunity to leave her safe, underwater city of Atlantia for life on the surface. But when her life takes an unexpected twist and Rio must remain below, she is left with increasingly dangerous questions about the complex political and religious system constructed to govern the fragile divide between land and sea.

It sounds like Ally Condie is really delving into the fantastical, which should be fun! We’ve got stories about werewolves, vampires, angels, demons, Gods… and now we will have one about an underwater world! It is not specified if this will be about “merpeople,” but I’m sure in due time we will find out. While Ally says she is excited to write about families and sister, she also reassured her fans that there will be more amazing romance stories in our future, saying,  ”Don’t worry, there is also romance!”

What do you think about the new announcement? Feeling skeptical about a story about an underwater world? Feeling excited to learn about that world’s “complex political and religious system”? Share in the comments!!! 

Ally Condie’s lovely mother!

In her latest blog post, Ally Condie essentially dubs her mother “the artist.” It’s a very touching blog post about family, moms, passion and the art of creating. If you need a little pick me up, I suggest reading the post in its’ entirety!

Jon Chu

David Slade is no longer set to direct Disney’s upcoming adaptation of Matched. Though there’s no news as to why this change occurred, Heat Vision is reporting that Jon Chu is about to seal a deal to take his place in the director’s chair!

Jon Chu is mostly known for more modern-day, highly-choreographed films like Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D (both of which he worked on with Matched producer Adam Shankman) as well as the upcoming G.I. Joe: Retaliation. It will be interested to see what he does with a heartfelt futuristic romance!

The article also confirms that the script written by Michelle and Kiernan Mulroney (who also penned Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows) is complete! Hopefully, this means the project will start rolling along quickly from here on out!

Die Ankunft is currently #3 on Der Spiegel’s German Bestseller List. This includes all hardcover books, not just Young Adult series! Last week it was at #2!

To show just how hyped up the books were right now, German Matched Trilogy fan Emmy Neal sent Ally this picture from her local train station:

Ally Condie posted a picture of her own “mud bird”, as created by her friend Brook Andreoli:

On her blog, Allysaid:

I’ll keep this quite spoiler-free, but basically it’s a scene where a girl makes a bird out of some materials (one of those materials is mud, and one is glass). It’s a scene about creation and making something out of what you have.

I’m working on a new mud bird right now. Several of them, actually, and boy, are my hands dirty. And I am certainly getting lots of little cuts as I work with what I have and try to repurpose new things. I’m not just talking about writing projects (though I do have some of those!). Creation can be exhilarating. It can also be painful.

Here are the details:
Thursday, January 10th
Orem Public Library
Orem, UT
7 p.m.

There will be no formal sale or book signing at the event, but as Ally mentioned in her Facebook comments “…I’m sure if you came up to me with books after I would be unable to say no. “

So, with three best-selling books in three years, it appears that Condie, 34, has just suddenly hit the jackpot. In an interview before a recent program for teens in Bethesda, however, Condie is quick to correct the record, noting that she earlier had published five novels for teens with a small, religious-focused publisher, Deseret Book Company in her home state of Utah, before even beginning “Matched.”

In fact, Condie now credits those early novels as a type of apprenticeship that gave her the skills to eventually write her best-selling trilogy.

“The editors there [at Deseret Book] were the first ones to see some promise in me, and I’m grateful,” Condie added.

Read the full profile here!