Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh (Flame in the Mist #1)
Hey Bookworms!
Welcome to my stop on the Sublime Karma Blog Tour! I am excited to be posting a Excerpt + the Giveaway.
Title: SUBLIME KARMA
Author: Peyton Garver
Pub. Date: May 28, 2017
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Pages: 302
Formats: Paperback eBook
Find it: Amazon, B&N, TBD, Goodreads
When Brie’s stepfather moves the family for what he calls a new beginning, it’s not the new beginning the beautiful, yet guarded, senior would have hoped for. Brie is instantly targeted by jealous girls at her new school, and the only available seat on her bus is next to the school’s star wide receiver, Jake, who for some reason, finds her offensive. After a humiliating article and picture of Brie is posted in the online school journal, a demon she thought she’d overcome resurfaces, and her life unravels. A newly compassionate Jake has finally taken an interest in her, but can Brie learn to trust her heart, or will she miss out on the best thing that ever happened to her?
Jake has his own secrets and has built his own walls, but eventually his curiosity about the new girl gets the best of him. Unfortunately, now there is competition: the captain of her cross-country team. Jake’s romantic histories with the girl next door and the school’s queen bee, adds tension to a simmering tempest when all he wants is Brie. Is he strong enough to help the one he loves weave sense into her crumbling new reality while overcoming his own tainted past? This is an edgy YA with issues of bullying, self harm, and attempted suicide…with an HEA ending.
As a child, Peyton called places like Livorno, Italy; Orléans, France; and Augsburg, Germany home. She has since settled in Maryland, where she earned her degree in education at Towson State University, married her sweetheart of two years, and became an instant mother to three spirited young boys before adding another son to the brood. And, with their yellow lab George, it’s no stretch to say she’s outnumbered.
When not writing, Peyton is a full time teacher. Inspired by the individual spirits, heartaches, and triumphs of her students, Peyton has developed characters who resemble real world teens dealing with real issues: relationships, jealousy, bullying, and depression. Her newest novel, Sublime Karma, is a contemporary story filled with emotion, depth, wit, and suspense. Sublime Karma was published in the fall of 2016 by Soulmate Publishing.
When asked if she actually involves her students in her stories, Peyton answered that her stories are completely fictional, but then admitted to an activity in which she does involve them. “One quirky, fun thing I like to do with students who have read my book is develop a dream cast for my characters. That all started when a group of girls were arguing over which actor they thought best fit the character Four in Veronica Roth’s novel Divergent. They then turned their efforts to my manuscript. I’ve since added those dream casts to my website.”
When she’s not teaching or writing, Peyton enjoys traveling. The Caribbean Islands have become a favorite vacation getaway for Peyton and her husband. “Nothing is better than sitting on a beach, in front of the crystal clear sea, enveloped in the warmth of the tropical sun with a frosty piña colada and a good book that I just can’t put down.”
Website | Twitter | Facebook |Goodreads
The bus snaked its way through the country roads and then to the lavish development that backed up to the woods behind his house. Upperclassmen from this neighborhood had their own cars. This bus collected the underclassmen: those few who weren’t chauffeured, as minions of the privileged.
Jake leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest, not looking at the kids coming down the aisle. None dared to ask if they could sit in the empty space next to him. They’d sit three to a seat rather than make that request. Just the way he wanted it.
The over-filled bus pulled to a stop midway down Belmont Circle. New stop? Jake looked out his window at the estate with a circular drive. Huh. It finally sold. He watched as a single figure headed toward the bus. What, so now they get door-to-door service? He rolled his eyes.
Seconds later, she stood in the aisle waiting. From his seat, his eyes skimmed up passed her faded jeans and plain, loose sweater, and his breath caught in his throat. Her long blond hair was pulled to the side in a loose braid. Her face? Ethereal. But then, his flustered gaze became an annoyed glare.
Her bleak gray eyes seemed to look right through him before they darted to the space next to him. Did she even register his indignation? She must have. Yet, she stood there in the aisle twisting the loose adjustment strap on her backpack tightly around her fingers.
“May I sit here?” her meek voice broke the silence that had fallen around them.
Noticing the hush of conversation, Jake’s eyes skimmed the crowded bus. There was no doubt he and this new girl had an audience. Not something he relished.
His eyes swept back to her. He could tell she was nervous. He heard it in her quavering voice and saw it in the way she avoided his eyes. He could just say no. But so long as she was standing, the bus wouldn’t budge.
1 winner will receive TWO signed a finished copies of SUBLIME KARMA 1 for them and one for the high school of the winner’s choice to be dedicated in their name and a $10 Amazon Gift Card, US Only.
Week One:
10/9/2017- Bookish In Bed– Review
10/9/2017- Howling Libraries– Review
10/10/2017- BookHounds YA– Guest Post
10/10/2017- Blushing Bibliophile– Review
10/11/2017- YA/NA Book Divas– Review
10/11/2017- Bibliobakes– Review
10/12/2017- Seeing Double In Neverland– Interview
10/12/2017- The Phantom Paragrapher– Review
10/13/2017- Cindy’s Love of Books– Guest Post
10/13/2017- Caffeine and Composition– Review
Week Two:
10/16/2017- Don’t Judge, Read– Excerpt
10/16/2017- YA and Wine– Spotlight
10/17/2017- Portrait of a Book– Interview
10/17/2017- Reese’s Reviews– Review
10/18/2017- A Dream Within A Dream– Spotlight
10/18/2017- Why I Read– Review
10/19/2017- MrsLeif’s Two Fangs About It Book Reviews – Excerpt
10/19/2017- Novel Novice– Guest Post
10/20/2017- Books at Dawn– Excerpt
10/20/2017- Wonder Struck– Review
Until next time,
The Dark Lake by Sarah Bailey (Gemma Woodstock #1)
Warcross by Marie Lu (Warcross #1)
Hey Bookworms!
Welcome to my stop on the Traitor’s Hope Blog Tour! I am excited to be posting a Guest Post + the Giveaway.
(Guest Post: How to Research Your Story Before Writing It)
Title: TRAITOR’S HOPE (Blade’s Edge #2)
Author: Virginia McClain
Pub. Date: October 14, 2017
Publisher: Artemis Dingo Productions
Pages: 284
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Find it: Amazon, Buy The Paperback, Goodreads
Traitors lurk around every bend. Mishi’s mind is betraying her, and she fears her kisō and katana will betray her next. Taka’s heart abandons her for a person she cannot possibly trust. Now that the two friends are obliged to help re-establish peace in the land of Gensokai, the only question is where the next betrayal will come from and if Mishi and Taka will have the strength to survive it.
Virginia thinks dangling from the tops of hundred foot cliffs is a good time. She also enjoys hauling a fifty pound backpack all over the Grand Canyon and sleeping under the stars. Sometimes she likes running for miles through the desert, mountains, or wooded flatlands, and she always loves getting lost in new places where she may or may not speak the language.
From surviving earthquakes in Japan, to putting out a small forest fire in Montana, Virginia has been collecting stories from a very young age. She works hard to make her fiction as adventurous as her life and her life as adventurous as her fiction. Both take a lot of imagination.
She recently moved to Winnipeg with her husband (a Manitoba native) and their dog.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Oh, research… for some authors it’s the unwanted step-child of a Grimm fairy-tale, for others it’s the prized, pure-bred Pomeranian that they just can’t stop showing you pictures of. Either extreme can lead to bad writing, and it can be tough to find the right balance, but it’s generally always worth making the effort.
Pretty much all writing requires some level of research. Beware the author who says they did zero research. I mean, I write fantasy, I technically have license to just make up every aspect of my world without consulting anyone, but… I still do research. Even complete fictions are more compelling when based in fact.
The truth is, I enjoy doing research for my writing, even though I was someone who hated doing research for papers when I was a student. But writing novels isn’t like writing papers (no need to write a tedious bibliography and do proper citations), and I’m only researching things that I’m interested in. For example, for the Chronicles of Gensokai books: traditional samurai clothing and weapons, fighting techniques, and culture. Or, specifically for Traitor’s Hope: the symptoms, causes, and treatments for PTSD. I find those topics fascinating, and the trick becomes not including all of the fascinating facts I learned during my research in one giant rush of information sure to put all of my readers straight to sleep. This happens to a lot of authors, because we get excited about our newfound knowledge, and want to share it with the world. “SURELY EVERYONE ELSE WILL FIND THIS AS FASCINATING AS I DO!” we shout at our computer screens before madly retyping whole paragraphs from Wikipedia articles and textbooks that we have borrowed from the library.
This is why editors exist.
Seriously though, it takes a bit of restraint to keep from doing this, and it’s an easy trap to fall into. Have you ever read The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel? I loved that book, and wanted to love the series, but I struggled, repeatedly, to get through the three-page explanation of the atlatl that she included EVERY. TIME. IT. WAS. USED. Seriously! I know she must have learned a tremendous amount about pre-historic peoples and tools, and spent huge amounts of time acquiring said knowledge, and really, I found the description fascinating the first time that she included it… but after that I understood how it worked and why it was important and didn’t need to read a brief dissertation on the history of the atlatl and how it changed hunting for Neanderthals every time someone got one out to help bring down a bison.
Ahem. My point, dear readers, is that research, while important, needs to be streamlined when it hits the page. It is very important that you, as a writer, understand how the mechanics of what you are writing works. Whether you’re writing a police procedural or a romcom you should be doing some amount of research. Readers don’t like it when they find factual errors in your book, and you have to assume that someone somewhere is going to read your book who knows more about something than you do, so it pays to do your research. But, once you’ve done it, don’t hammer people with it. Sprinkle it lightly, gently, across your writing, so that it is clear that you haven’t pulled it all from nowhere. Try to do that without forcing anyone to read an instruction manual on how to reload a Glock 9mm every time your protagonist needs to shoot one.
For my part, I have stories that I research extensively before I start them: I am working on a sci-fi series that takes place thousands of years in earth’s future, and for a big part of the setting I needed to consult an evolutionary biologist. So, I called one up at the local university where I was living at the time and asked her if I could buy her a coffee in exchange for pelting her with random questions about the evolution of plants, animals, and genetic mutations. To my great delight she accepted, and I now have copious notes to use for my world building.
Then, there are stories that I only research on the fly as issues arise, like most of Traitor’s Hope. The information about feudal Japan is only looked up as needed, when I’ve forgotten something or I think a detail might be important. After all, Gensokai is only inspired by feudal Japan, it’s actually its own, fictional world, so I don’t rely too heavily on how things were historically. Meanwhile, the PTSD is something I take very seriously in terms of representing properly, so that research was done before I even started the book. However, I had to alter things to fit a world without psychologists or psychotherapists, without lab created medications, and with the added complication of magic. So, I had to balance out what my research told me with what made sense for my world, and all the while treat the condition and the people it affects with the respect they deserve. I have no idea if I succeeded or not, but I gave it my best.
Research. To summarize: research is an author’s best friend. Until it isn’t. Does that help?
1 winner will receive a signed paperback set of BLADE’S EDGE & TRAITOR’S HOPE, US Only.
3 winners will receive eBook sets of BLADE’S EDGE & TRAITOR’S HOPE, International.
Week One:
10/9/2017- Two Chicks on Books– Interview
10/9/2017- Blushing Bibliophile– Review
10/10/2017- Arvenig.it– Guest Post
10/10/2017- Bibliobakes– Review
10/11/2017- Kati’s Bookaholic Rambling Reviews– Excerpt
10/11/2017- Ashley M. Delgado– Review
10/12/2017- A Dream Within A Dream– Excerpt
10/12/2017- Don’t Judge, Read– Spotlight
10/13/2017- BookHounds YA– Guest Post
10/13/2017- Adventures Thru Wonderland– Review
Week Two:
10/16/2017- Novel Novice– Excerpt
10/16/2017- Nick Bryan Dot Com– Review
10/17/2017- Books at Dawn– Guest Post
10/17/2017- YA and Wine– Excerpt
10/18/2017- Fire and Ice– Spotlight
10/18/2017- A Gingerly Review– Review
10/19/2017- My Nook, Books & More– Excerpt
10/19/2017- Jena Brown Writes– Review
10/20/2017- Seeing Double In Neverland– Interview
10/20/2017- Ramblings From An Alternate Reality– Review
Until next time,
TWITTER|GOOD READS|INSTAGRAM|BLOG LOVIN’
Hey Bookworms!
Here are the covers that were revealed during the week of October 9 – October 15. Click the author to hop on over to their GoodReads page to add it to you’re TBR!
This was a big week for reveals. Hope ya’ll enjoy.
The Blackbird Season by Kate Moretti