Night owls blog tour; Author post

My Best  Journey Ever

By Jenn Bennett.

I wasn’t always a writer. In one past career, I used to travel to the Far East a lot, dealing with factories. It was my job to come up with new products, and I’d take my crazy new ideas to China, where they’d translate them into working prototypes. On one trip, I was paired with a soft-spoken Chinese man named Larry from our Shenzhen office, whose job was to be my guide and take me deeper into the mainland, far away from the big cities, where the factories were smaller and specialized in carving wood.

At that point in my career, I’d spent most of my time in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Taipei—all big cities, all fairly easy for English speakers to navigate. (Hong Kong especially. To this day it remains one of my favorite places, and the people there, some of the kindest I’ve ever met.) But Larry hired a driver who would steer us away from my familiar anchors. When I asked him how long it would take to get there, he said, “Not long.” I had no idea what to expect.

The first day’s drive was fair. We spent the night in a decent-sized city that still held traces of the West. Good: There was a McDonald’s outside our hotel. Bad: The hotel’s mini-bar food was all expired and there were bugs in the bed. I didn’t sleep. Day two, I spent in a restless state in the back of the car, staring at the changing scenery as rain fell over lush green mountains. We stopped to eat at a crumbling traditional house with a courtyard straight out of a historical Kung Fu movie. They butchered a chicken in front in me with a large cleaver and washed greens in a forest stream. There was no modern plumbing, so I was forced to pee in a hole in the ground around the back of the house. I had a small mental breakdown and cried, pulled myself together, and went back inside and ate that chicken; it turned out to be one of the best meals of my life.

Day three: In the middle of a rural town, both the sidewalks and the road just…ended. Like, actually abruptly ended. We were driving along, and it was as if the workers ran out of material, packed up their things, and stopped constructing the street. It was at this point that I turned to Larry and started laughing. He laughed, too. It didn’t really matter anymore where we were going. The whole thing was so absurd. “Is this the end of the world?” I asked him. He thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Yes. We’ve travelled to the end of the world. What do you think of it?”

In Night Owls, my character, Beatrix, takes a journey on a midnight bus in San Francisco, where she runs into my hero, Jack, an anonymous graffiti artist who’s been spray-painting giant gold words across the city. She didn’t plan on taking that bus, and she certainly didn’t plan to meet Jack. But sometimes unexpected journeys can have strange and wondrous outcomes if you open yourself up to them.

Night owls

Feeling alive is always worth the risk.

Meeting Jack on the Owl—San Francisco's night bus—turns Beatrix's world upside down. Jack is charming, wildly attractive...and possibly one of San Francisco's most notorious graffiti artists.

But Jack is hiding a piece of himself. On midnight rides and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who this enigmatic boy really is.

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Blog tour; Hook's daughter: Ten little known facts

Ten Little Known Facts About Hook’s Daughter

1. Jocelyn is named, in a way, after Peter Pan’s mother. Peter was inspired by the friendship J.M. Barrie had with the Llewelyn Davies family, or more particular, the Llewelyn Davies children. The boys’ mother was named Sylvia, but Barrie preferred to call her by her middle name: Jocelyn. 
2. I listened to the soundtrack to the 2003 live action Peter Pan film dozens of times as I wrote and revised, sometimes putting a single song on repeat for a chapter or two to help set the right mood.
3. Eight years passed from the time I first began thinking about Captain Hook’s daughter to the time I held a finished copy of her story. 
4. When my daughter was small, she was fascinated by the American television program, Dirty Jobs. In each episode, the host, Mike Rowe, spent a day working difficult, dirty jobs such as Garbage Pit Technician or Worm Dung Farmer. For some reason, my daughter got the impression that Rowe’s name was Dirty Bob. I thought that would make an excellent name for a pirate.
5. Blind Bart was inspired by a character—a pirate with eye patches over both eyes—in the picture book, That’s How I Became a Pirate, by Melinda Long and illustrated by David Shannon. 
6. After offering to represent me, the man who would become my literary agent sent me a link to a song by the Decemberists: The Mariner’s Revenge Song. From that point on, I never started a revision session without listening to it to put me in a piratical mood. (You can listen here.) 
7. Nubbins was originally named Stumpy. It was very late in the process—after the manuscript had been through copyedits—that I changed it. I was sitting in church when the new name occurred to me. Divine inspiration?
8. Years before the character of Nanette Arbuckle came into existence, I caught a glimpse of a man as he drove past me. In the split second I saw him, he was just about to sneeze. I thought, What if he always looks like that? I wrote in my notebook: “He had the pinch-faced look of a man perpetually on the verge of a sneeze that never would come.” When I conceived of Nanette, that description seemed perfect for her.
9. I don’t know exactly how many drafts I wrote before this story was finished, but I believe it was at least twenty. In the first drafts, Roger was a minor character and only mentioned in a few paragraphs.
10. The letter Captain Hook writes to Jocelyn, sending her on her great adventure, has only changed by a few words from the version I wrote way back in 2006.

Hook's daughter by Heidi Schulz

It’s not easy being the daughter of Captain Hook. Twelve-year-old Jocelyn dreams of following in his footsteps – but her grandfather sends her to finishing school instead.

When her father meets his unfortunate end, Jocelyn sails to Neverland to avenge his death. But she hadn’t bargained on ticking crocodiles, lazy pirates and a trouble-making boy called Peter Pan.

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Blog tour: SeaRISE; Character book review of The time machine

The Time Machine by H G Wells

Review by Donald Ferguson, St Kilda, Scotland, 8th December 1918



It was H G Wells and not Jules Vernes who wrote The Time Machine in 1895, just over a decade before I was born. For some reason I get those two authors mixed up. It’s a story about a man who builds a machine that can take him to the future. I was in the middle of reading it when something very strange happened, so strange in fact, that it’s taken me quite a while to get round to finishing the book.
The Time Traveller in Wells’ story goes to a distant time in the future when there are two kinds of odd-looking humans on the Earth – the Eloi and the Morlocks. He rescues an Eloi girl called Weena, but as they are escaping they get caught up in a forest fire. Later when he gets back to his house in Richmond in Surrey in his own time, he proves to his friends he has been gone for ages in the future (even though he was only missing for 3 hours) by showing them two flowers that Weena had put in his pocket. But if you think that’s strange, then my story is even stranger.

One day in May this year, when the war was still raging, I spotted two girls down on the beach. They seemed to emerge from a large black cube that I’d never seen before. It turned out the younger girl was called Alice, who said she was also from St Kilda, but 100 years into the future, and the older girl was actually a lady called Karla Ingermann, who is the Seabean’s (that’s the name of the black cube) inventor from Germany. They had a blue parrot with them too. My mum, Dora Ferguson, who is our teacher, was worried about it all, but I was very excited to meet some people from the future. Alice wore very strange clothes – Wellington boots with flowers on them, and a sweater that was made of a strange material patterned with rainbow-coloured stripes. She showed us inside the Seabean, and told us that she could command it to go anywhere. It was just bright white inside until Alice started singing an old Scottish sea shanty and then the Seabean started to display moving pictures of a sea voyage and you could hear the seagulls crying and everything. It was incredible! I persuaded my mother to let us go back in time like Alice had done, and in just a few moments we found ourselves at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851! There were elm trees growing inside a vast glass building, and the parrot who was called Spix flew up into the branches and then Alice picked up a seed that had dropped from one of the trees. We accidentally left the parrot behind, which was a shame, but Alice still had the seed in her pocket, just like the Time Traveller in Wells’ story.

When we arrived back on St Kilda, at first it was the right place but the wrong time – instead of 1918 it was still 1851, and Alice realized she had made a mistake. However, when we finally arrived in 1918, our island was being attacked by a German U-boat. It was all very frightening. Alice and Karla were taken prisoner because the islanders thought they were spies. It’s a long story, but eventually I helped Alice to escape back to her time in the Seabean and she gave me the elm seed as a goodbye present. Now Karla has disappeared too. I still don’t know if she managed to find another Seabean, but now I wish that instead of going to the past I had gone with Alice to the future, like the time traveller in The Time Machine. I’d like to know what the future is like in 2018
where she came from, and be able to tell her I planted the elm tree seed and that it’s started to grow.



Donald Ferguson features in SeaWAR, the prequel to SeaRISE by Sarah Holding.

SeaRISE by Sarah Holding

SeaBEAN Book three

In the thrilling final part of The SeaBEAN Trilogy, Alice and her five classmates are - for reasons they have yet to discover - abducted to 2118 in the C-Bean, their time-travel device, only to find the world is a difficult and alienating place. 

How will they survive their terrifying ordeal? Who can help them figure out a way to get back to their own time? Will they escape before their captor Commander Hadron catches up with them? Who is he anyway and what's his connection to the mysterious Dr Foster? 

Unsettled by the devastation they find everywhere in the future and armed with new knowledge about the C-Bean's ultimate purpose, Alice and Co scour the planet, confronting many challenges in pursuit of answers to their questions. But can they figure out a way to restore the Earth's delicate ecological balance for good?

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Blog tour: Werewolf love - Character profile

All About Eye Of The Storm

Writing About Werewolves – Character Profiles: Lawrence

Name: Lawrence Gunvald

Age: thirty-seven

Flaxen-blond hair.

Ice-blue eyes

6 ft and 3”

Build: damn fine.

Lawrence … oh, where do I start? My heart sort of skips a beat when I think about Lawrence and all that he is. He is the “unknown element” throughout book one and most of book two. You’ve gotta have a mysterious tortured guy in a paranormal erotic / romance type book, right? Lawrence is it. Writing him was surprisingly not that difficult, and I think it’s because I always knew where I was going with him in my mind. It’s hard to write someone who is remote and icy and aloof and make it different to how anyone else writes this kind of Alpha male. To be honest, there’s no difference … until book two. You have to read book two to understand Lawrence. Then you’ll see what’s different. I can’t really talk about the connection between him and Lydia, or even him and all the other males. It’s there and it’s deep – not least because of who he really is – and it’s impossible to explain. It’s something you have to read to truly get the essence of.

We meet Lawrence in book one, Releasing The Wolf, and get to know much more about him in book two, Cry Of The Wolf.

More about Lawrence:

(May contain SPOILERS for books one and two.)

Icy and aloof, with a tortured past he doesn't talk about, Lawrence, at thirty-seven, bears the emotional and physical scars of a pain he wishes he could bury. Hailing from a revered and respected line of wolves, he has sacrificed everything including his Alpha status because he has nothing to offer any pack or mate. Instead, he relinquished his title to Ryan. But when Lydia hurtles into their lives, his world is rocked and his past is brought to the forefront of his life.

The Eye Of The Storm series is an erotic, paranormal fantasy about werewolves, and when animal urges battle with the human higher mind. It’s about lust and control, and sorrow and change, but also with a hefty plot that takes all of these themes through two or three mythological structures.

All info can be found at: http://www.diannahardy.com/eye-of-the-storm.html

About the author

Dianna combines a titillating mix of paranormal romance and urban fantasy into her writing, to bring you stories that are action-packed, fast-paced and not short of heat, with the focus on both character development and the plot. She writes both full-length novels and short fiction.

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The Witching Pen website

Blog tour: Zenn Scarlett - Guest post

How I became a Bookaholic

By Christian Schoon

Like many authors, I started seeing books as friends, of a sort, from early childhood. The living room of our house was lined with bookshelves, my mother was an English teacher, my sister and brothers all loved to read (OK, maybe one brother would rather be out in the garage tuning up his Firebird). So, even in grade school, I almost never went to bed without a book to prop up on my knees. I got so used to that pattern that I’d still never consider ending the day without something to read in bed.

Among the earliest books were genre classics like Rusty’s Space Ship, The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek, Burrogh’s Barsoom series, other SF Golden Age classics, augmented by a never-ending stream of “true life” animal adventures from authors like Seton (Wild Animals I Have Known) and others who wrote about the nitty-gritty, many-times violent but always realistic lives of animals in their natural habitats, as opposed to the often (but not always) anthropomorphized Disney animated and live-action critter flicks.

I think my true addiction to books really took hold in junior high. By then I was a full-fledged genre-holic, consuming SF and fantasy by the stack. My favorite reading spot was a few miles outside of my small Minnesota home town. I’d pack a book and a lunch and ride my bike out there. It was an old, abandoned quarry. The rock was Sioux Quartzite. The main area was a huge amphitheater with pink rock walls in a horseshoe shape, the cliffs being about 200 feet high. The stone was so hard it eventually became too expensive to continue to cut it, and the place was abandoned. Which suited me fine. The sun would warm the glacier-polished rock up on top of the amphitheater and I’d read all afternoon with jackrabbits, killdeer and the wind through the prairie grass for company. I had the usual circle of friends through high school, but because of the way that I grew up, surrounded by books and encouraged to love them and the places they could take me, I was always more than happy to spend afternoons like this.

And, not surprisingly, when I moved away from LA and my scriptwriting contacts there, I turned to novel writing as a logical career move. Zenn Scarlett is, perhaps, my own debut, novice effort at creating a character and a world and a story that someone else might befriend, the way I’d befriended so many books growing up.

Zenn Scarlett

When you're studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school... is a different kind of animal. 

Zenn Scarlett is a resourceful, determined 17-year-old girl working hard to make it through her novice year of exovet training. That means she's learning to care for alien creatures that are mostly large, generally dangerous and profoundly fascinating. Zenn’s all-important end-of-term tests at the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic on Mars are coming up, and, she's feeling confident of acing the exams. But when a series of inexplicable animal escapes and other disturbing events hit the school, Zenn finds herself being blamed for the problems. As if this isn't enough to deal with, her absent father has abruptly stopped communicating with her; Liam Tucker, a local towner boy, is acting unusually, annoyingly friendly; and, strangest of all: Zenn is worried she's started sharing the thoughts of the creatures around her. Which is impossible, of course. Nonetheless, she can't deny what she's feeling.

Now, with the help of Liam and Hamish, an eight-foot sentient insectoid also training at the clinic, Zenn must learn what's happened to her father, solve the mystery of who, if anyone, is sabotaging the cloister, and determine if she's actually sensing the consciousness of her alien patients... or just losing her mind. All without failing her novice year....

About the author
Born in the American Midwest, Christian started his writing career in earnest as an in-house writer at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. He then became a freelance writer working for various film, home video and animation studios in Los Angeles. After moving from LA to a farmstead in Iowa several years ago, he continues to freelance and also now helps re-hab wildlife and foster abused/neglected horses.  He acquired his amateur-vet knowledge, and much of his inspiration for the Zenn Scarlett series of novels, as he learned about - and received an education from - these remarkable animals.

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Blog tour; Speechless - Author writing tips

Have you got any tips for aspiring writers?  

Everyone’s writing process is different. The great thing about writing is that there are no limits when it comes to ideas or experimentation. However, there are a few simple ways to make your writing stronger:

1.       Show, don’t tell. This is a basic idea, but it can be harder than it looks. Readers don’t want you to spell everything out about what a character is feeling—they want to experience it from the way a character behaves or what they say. If a girl is beautiful, don’t tell me she’s beautiful—describe what makes her beautiful so I can believe it.

2.       Don’t be afraid of the word “said”. Sometimes it’s good to use more descriptive words, but you’ll find that your dialogue goes much smoother without interjecting it with “she cried” or “she yelled” or “she announced” every other line.

3.       Character voice. Think of two friends you have, or two family members. Do they speak the same way? Probably not. Everyone has their own voice and mannerisms and sense of humor (or lack of!). Trying to differentiate your character voices in dialogue so they don’t all sound alike can do wonders for your character development.

4.       Read! A great way to learn about writing is to read the works of other writers you love. Read your favorite novels and try to think about why it is you love them so much. Is it the descriptions, the plots, the characters, the writing style? You can then try to apply what you love about other people’s writing to your own.

5.       Write every day, no matter what. Even if you feel you have nothing to say. Even if it’s just a sentence or two. The only way to become a better writer is to write, write, write!

Do you ever base your characters on people you know in real life?

I don’t base any of them on specific people. Certain dynamics I’ve had with family and friends sometimes inform the way my characters interact with each other. But whenever my family or friends plan to read, I have to reassure them that no, it’s not based on them! My sister still hasn’t read Saving June—I think she’s worried it’s about her, when it really isn’t!

Speechless

Everyone knows that Chelsea Knot can’t keep a secret

Until now. Because the last secret she shared turned her into a social outcast—and nearly got someone killed.

Now Chelsea has taken a vow of silence—to learn to keep her mouth shut, and to stop hurting anyone else. And if she thinks keeping secrets is hard, not speaking up when she’s ignored, ridiculed and even attacked is worse.

But there’s strength in silence, and in the new friends who are, shockingly, coming her way—people she never noticed before; a boy she might even fall for. If only her new friends can forgive what she’s done. If only she can forgive herself.

l

About the author

Hannah Harrington is a 25-year-old born and bred Michigander. She grew up in the town of East Grand Rapids before later moving to the Lansing area, where she currently resides with three cats and a black labrador, all of whom are named after famous musicians.

 She wrote her first book at age nine, a stunning, forty-page Call of the Wild/Black Beauty ripoff ode to her dead dog. She later attempted her second at fourteen (by longhand), but failed miserably. She got the idea for Saving June during the summer after high school, while living out of her car and working as a pizza cook. It wasn't until she was twenty-one that she decided to write a story around the scenes she'd scribbled into a notebook years before.

 Saving June, Hannah's first novel, was published by Harlequin Teen in 2011. Her next novel, Speechless, will be released in the US on August 28th, 2012.

 When she isn't busy writing like a crazy person, Hannah enjoys horseback riding, arguing about politics, watching documentaries, playing guitar (very badly), and speaking about herself in the third person.

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Blog tour; Dead romantic - Guest post

How I became a Bookaholic

by C.J. Skuse

What got me into books and writing was abject loneliness, if you really want to know. I was 15 when I left private school and went to a sixth form centre to do my A Levels and there I proceeded to crawl into a very hard shell of my own making. The leap was huge and terrifying to me. Someone said ‘Go to college and do A Levels and mix with boys’ and what I heard was ‘Go and jump the Grand Canyon in the nude, on a micro scooter with your eyes shut.’ No way, Pedro.
So I bunked off from college a lot. When I did turn up to class, I couldn’t identify with people my own age. They were all about the Friday and Saturday night. All about the ‘What you doing later?’ All about the ‘Who are you doing later?’ All about the ‘So and So fancies So and So but So and So fancies Someone Else.’ I tried to fit in for a while but in the end I just couldn’t do it. And I knew I was the odd one out.
The square peg.
And what choice does a square peg have? It either sands down its sides to fit in, or it stays a boring old square.
Well, I tried and I failed to sand down my sides, so I took the road less travelled and it took me to a library in the centre of town. Every chance I got, I would escape there and tuck myself away in a corner and read the books I wanted to read, chomping on a comfort pastie; my trainers neatly placed under my seat. No one badgering me to join in. No one telling me to go out and get some fresh air. No one taking the piss out of me for not going to this or that party.
Just me and a book.
 And a pastie.
And an occasional drunk who’d stick his hands down his trousers behind the Stephen Kings.
Oh reader, how I would love to say I read all the classics in those stolen hours. How I would love to tell you how I bulldozed through all the Brontes’, devoured the crap out of Dickens, memorised the poems and soliloquys of Shakespeare, Keats or that weird one who killed herself.
But I didn't.
I read the books my English teacher told me not to. All the Point Horror and Point Romances. I lived vicariously in those plots of teenagers getting murdered at fun fairs, cheerleaders getting murdered at cheerleader tryouts, babysitters getting murdered by vampires or werewolves and large groups of shiny happy friends staying at sumptuous beach houses but also getting murdered. I lived in those books. It was these books that taught me how to hide in Storyland. Live vicariously through imagined worlds. Wish all the annoying shiny happy cheerleader types really would just fucking die.
I guess it also built the foundation of my love for YA too.
And then a chance conversation with my cousin one night about our shared childhood in the countryside hit upon an absolute stream of magic. It became so obvious – I wasn’t handling growing up so I would relive my childhood through writing. Everything I had lost, I would give back to myself in a novel.
And so, aged 17, I set to work. ‘Oh you’re writing a novel?’ people would say. ‘That’s nice.’ And here would endeth the conversation. Nevertheless, I carried on. Carried on reading. Carried on writing. Carried on hiding.
Around the same time I became obsessed with The Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame. I bought this biography by Alison Prince and revelled in the fact that he too had a compulsive desire to relive his childhood after finding growing up a big disappointment. Everywhere he went he too felt like a square peg in a round hole; unable to leave the past behind because it had been inexplicably ripped away from him. His children’s books grew from that longing. My own novel was shaped by a similar childhood longing and peppered with quotes from Grahame’s stories as an homage to the only person in the world who I thought would understand.
Everything I have had published since then springs from these years in my life; from being 16-18. This first book featured a dangerously anti-social girl, quick-tempered and constantly railing against authority.
The opening scene was this girl called Beth being expelled from her posh boarding school (see Pretty Bad Things).
There was also a character in that first novel called Jody who was depressed and wore black jeans and band t-shirts and who was failing to come to terms with her father’s abandonment and her grandfather’s death (see Rockoholic).
Everyone around me at that time had boyfriends, social lives, friends, and I was the odd one out. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I didn’t have any true friends. I didn't enjoy it. Except English. I especially liked studying Frankenstein (see Dead Romantic).
And look at me now. I’m 32 and I’m still not into the same things people my age are into. I should be married. I should have popped out some ungrateful, world-hating spawn of my own. I should have a full time job, a mortgage and be cultivating a few stress-related tumours. But (as far as I know), I’m not. I am a square peg through and through. Always have been, always will be.
And that has made all the difference.

Dead romantic

Review

Camille wants to find the perfect boy, with an athlete's body and a poet's brain. But when she's mocked at a college party, she kows there isn't a boy alive who'll ever measure up. Enter Zoe, her brilliant but strange best friend, who takes biology homework to a whole new level. She can create Camille's dream boy, Frankenstein-stylee. But can she make him love her?

About the author
I write books. The first book is quite offensive. The second book is an ode to rock music. The third book is batshit crazy. You may like them, you may not. Either is fine with me.

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Blog tour; Born wicked - Cover comparison

Hi guys, welcome to today's stop on the UK tour for Born wicked by Jessica Spotswood!

Today, me and some fellow bloggers will be comparing the UK and US covers for the book and deciding on our favourites.

So first of course, here are the covers!

The first is the UK cover and the second is the US cover.

Mist: Personally I love both but I lean more to the UK cover for the gorgeous colours and its all a bit mysterious with the birds, particularly the one she's holding so calmly, I like the US cover, the flowers really stand out, but what exactly is she doing lying in the grass? UK wins for me!

Ninfa: I'm actually having a hard time picking my favourite out of these covers. They're both fab, the UK one is very witchy and magical in a dark way. I love the purple tones of the background, the full moon and the murder of crows taking flight. The model looks like she's about to cast a spell and it's all very atmospheric.
The US cover is stunning, I adore the earthy feel of it, and the splash of colours the flowers provide. The model's eyes also seem to stand out and it gives you that wicked vibe.
Very, very hard choice, but just because of my fascination with all things witchy, the UK cover makes the cut. It's just Witch-Tastic UK wins!

Donna from Book passion for life: US Cover....I really like the US cover. It's eye catching and comes across quite enchanting looking and it also fits the times of the book too, however, after reading the book I don't feel it fits the book as much as the UK cover does. UK Cover....out of the US and UK cover, this is my favourite. Everything matches the book perfectly..the crows, the girl on the cover and my favourite part, the sunset. In the story, this sunset is easy to imagine and the colours really stand out making this book so much more stunning.

Emma from Bellebooks: I like the both covers, I like the colour scheme for the US cover with the greens and muted tones, but then the bright flowers standing out. But I've seen a lot of covers with a girl laying in the grass recently. To me it does seem a bit generic, because of that I probably wouldn't pick it up if I saw it in a book store, sorry.
I love the UK cover, I might be being a bit bias as this is the cover I have on my book shelf! I really love the crows in the background, to me that gives it a proper witchy feel before I've even read the blurb. I like the pink and purples used in it, it just seems to have more going on and drawing me in than the US cover does. Also it just reminds me of 666 Park Avenue, which I've really been loving lately so maybe thats drawing me to the UK cover more as well.
My winner has to be the UK cover.

Born wicked

Our mother was a witch too, but she hid it better. I miss her.

To me, the magic feels like a curse. According to the Brothers, it's devil-sent. Women who can do magic-they're either mad or wicked. So I will do everything in my power to protect myself and my sisters. Even if it means giving up my life - and my true love.

Because if the Brothers discover our secret, we're destined for the asylum, or prison . . . or death.

About the author

Jessica Spotswood is a debut US author. She grew up in a tiny one-stoplight town in Pennsylvania. Now she lives in a gentrifying hipster neighbourhood in Washington, D.C. with her playwright husband and a cuddly cat named Monkey. She's never happier than when she's immersed in a good story, and swoony kissing scenes are her favourite. Born Wicked is her debut novel for teens.

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Love hurts blog tour: Easy and Reason to breath - Quick fire interviews

Tammara Webber

1. Favourite ice cream flavour? Cherry Garcia

2. Summer or Spring? Spring

3. Do you believe in Aliens? Maybe

4. What's your middle name? N/A

5. Your favourite author? Jane Austen

6. One place you would love to visit? London

7. Half empty or half full? Half full

8. What hobby do you have? Reading J

9. Your ultimate celebrity crush? Jude Law Robert Downey Jr. Ian Somerhalder 

10. The age you read your first book? 5

Easy

Jacqueline seems to have a knack for making the wrong choices. She followed her boyfriend to his choice of university, disregarding her preference. Then he dumped her. She chose a minor she thought she could combine with her music studies, but she's falling behind. And then, leaving a party alone one night, she is attacked. If it wasn't for the timely intervention of a stranger, she would have been raped. Now she must make a choice - give up and give in, or toughen up and fight on. Only the support of the man who is tutoring her and the allure of the guy who saved her from the attack convince her that it's worth fighting on. Will Jacqueline now have to make a choice between them too? And can she make the right decision? It's not easy...

Author bio
Tammara Webber is the author of New York Times and Amazon bestseller Easy and three novels in the Between the Lines series. Before becoming a full-time writer, she was an academic advisor at the University of Texas. Tammara lives in Texas with her husband and too many cats. She loves baby carrots and happily-ever-after endings.

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Rebecca Donovan

1. Favourite ice cream flavour? Milky Way

2. Summer or Spring? Summer

3. Do you believe in Aliens? Yes

4. What's your middle name? J

5. Your favourite author? Thomas Harris

6. One place you would love to visit? Greece

7. Half empty or half full? FULL

8. What hobby do you have? Attending Concerts - it may be more of an obsession

9. Your ultimate celebrity crush? Jared Leto

10. The age you read your first book? Five

Reason to breathe

A passionate love. A brutal betrayal. Unwavering hope.

An incredible novel that will leave readers breathless

and desperate for more.

In a town where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She's more concerned with feigning perfection, pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises. Emma doesn't want anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is.

When Emma unexpectedly finds love, it challenges her to recognize her own worth - but at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she's desperate to hide.

Author bio

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Donovan has been a writer most of her life, but has just recently been deemed an author. Her debut novels, Reason to Breathe, and its sequel Barely Breathing, have resonated with readers around the world. Rebecca is currently working on the third and final instalment of The Breathing Series - Out of Breath. She lives in a small
town in Massachusetts, USA.

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Blog tour; Legacy - Guest post

How I became a Bookaholic

by C.J. Daugherty

I was obsessed with reading as a child. I was shy and found my own life unsatisfactory so I sought a new one in the pages of books.

I can remember going to the library with my mother who (foolishly) told me to “…pick as many books as you like.” When I walked up to her 30 minutes later holding a stack that reached to my nose, she and the librarian burst out laughing. 

After that I was given a book limit.

Still, when I was 12 I won an award for “Most library books read in a school year”. I’d read 150. These included everything from Don Quixote to a Man for All Seasons to books on SELF DEFENCE and a battered 1950s edition of Connie Francis’ Beauty Secrets. 

What that last one was doing there, I have no idea, but I’ve splashed my face five times with cold water in the morning ever since.

 I preferred old books even then – I liked the beautiful colours, the yellowing paper. How they felt in my hands. The way they smelled.

Neither of my parents read much, and at times they worried about me; my nose was always buried in a book and I didn’t have a lot of friends. They went so far as to take books away from me and order me to go outside and play. “Make friends,” they’d implore. “Be a normal child.” 

My grandmother was a reader, though. My co-conspirator. She gave me all her old books and books my aunts and uncles had read. 

So I immersed myself in the Cherry Ames series, by Helen Wells. Written in the 1940s it tells the story of about a young American girl who joins the Army during World War II and becomes a flight nurse. 

Then there was Polyanna, a book written in 1913 about a little girl who stays positive even when she loses everything. I’ve wondered ever since what calf’s foot jelly is. I still don’t know and I’m not sure I want to.

I adored The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew – a turn of the century series about a family living in “little brown house” who struggle to survive but always love each other. Their whole world changes when they are taken in by a wealthy benefactor.

I have no idea what other children my age were reading at the time. Because I was reading my grandmother’s books. 

And I still have that award from the library on my wall.

Legacy

Night school book two.

In the last year, Allie's survived three arrests, two breakups and one family breakdown. The only bright point has been her new life at Cimmeria Academy. It's the one place she's felt she belongs. And the fact that it's brought the dreamy Carter West into her life hasn't hurt...But far from being a safe haven, the cloistered walls of Cimmeria are proving more dangerous than Allie could've imagined. The students, and faculty, are under threat and Allie's family - from her mysterious grandma to her runaway brother - are at the centre of the storm. Allie is going to have to choose between protecting her family and trusting her friends. But secrets have a way of ripping even the strongest relationships apart...

Author bio
C.J. Daugherty was 22 when she saw her first dead body. Although she’s now left the world of crime reporting she has never lost her fascination with what it is that drives some people to do awful things as well as the kind of people who will try to stop them. The Night School series is the product of that fascination. Born in the USA, C.J. Daugherty has lived in the UK so long she considers herself British, even getting married to her English film producer husband at Anne Boleyn’s favourite castle in Kent, Hever Castle.

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Blog tour: Confessions of an angry girl - Guest post

How I Became a Bookaholic

by Louise Rozett

I have a confession to make. One of the reasons I fell in love with books is the (fictional) boys/guys/men I often ended up having crushes on. There were many, but two in particular stand out in my mind. Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Phineas, from A Separate Peace, by John Knowles.

I think Atticus was first. I was in junior high school, and I remember thinking that Atticus Finch was an amazing man and father. I also remember thinking how cute he was, thanks to my English teacher playing us sections of the movie after we read the corresponding sections in the book. (So maybe it was really Gregory Peck I had the crush on—who can say?!) The bottom line was, he was a pretty incredible guy, and I couldn’t wait to get back to the book to see what bit of wisdom and love he was going to dole out next.

The next year, I started high school, and we read A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I was madly in love with the perfectly beautiful and tragic Phineas, who does what he can to protect his best friend Gene even at great expense to himself. I loved Phineas deeply—I could picture him so clearly–but it was Gene who I really related to. I understood his struggle with feeling mediocre and average, and simultaneously loving and hating his best friend for being so perfect in every way. That book was exquisite torture for me.

As time went on and I kept reading, I fell in love with Joe from Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and John Reddy Heart from Joyce Carol Oates’ Broke Heart Blues. I’ve been thinking a lot about all these men lately probably because they led me to Jamie Forta, the guy my main character Rose falls for in Confessions of an Angry Girl. But I also realized that they were my introduction to falling in love with all sorts of characters. I found romantic love, familial love, and the love of friendship in the books that captured my imagination. And the experience of falling “in love” in all sorts of ways is what turned me into a reader for life.

Confessions of an angry girl

Available now from MIRA Ink
My review

This is a story about ROSE. About the occasional panic attack and being fourteen in the suburbs without a mobile phone. Read it and weep Rose's first year at Union High isn't exactly going to plan. Her family's broken, her supposed best friend's going boy crazy and Rose is so far behind socially that she might as well be moving backwards. Until her brother's friend Jamie offers her a ride home - and a way into the world of his popular clique - if only it weren't for his perfect cheerleader girlfriend. Now Rose is learning how to climb the wobbly high-school social ladder, while struggling to hang on to what matters the most...

Book trailer

Author bio
Louise Rozett is an author, a playwright, and a recovering performer. She is making her YA debut with Confessions of an Angry Girl, published by Harlequin Teen. Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend is due out May 2013. She lives with her boyfriend and 120-pound dog Lester in one of the world's greatest literary meccas, Brooklyn.

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Blog tour: The kiss off - Review

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The kiss off by Sarah Billington

The kiss off book one.

Available now. 

What's it about?

When sixteen year old Poppy Douglas writes a song about her ex-boyfriend Cam and ex-friend Nikki, she has no idea that her heartbreak is about to go global. 

A local band picks up her song from Youtube and soon she’s along for the ride with her own fanbase as they blow up on the local club scene and hit the international charts. Though it turns out leaving Cam behind isn’t as easy as she had hoped. 

Tangled in a web of unfinished homework, ill-considered sexting and a new lead-singer boyfriend, Poppy has a choice to make between the ex that inspired it all and the rock God whose poster lines the inside of half the lockers at school. But as she struggles to keep her emotional dirty laundry private, she learns that the truth can be hard to find when your life is in the headlines.

My review

The kiss off was a really fun novel to read, I loved Poppy's angsty voice, she's a bit of a moody teenager but completely likable.
I liked how the story started and how it panned out in the end, it was a great story that I enjoyed a lot.
I found the book really easy to get into and got through it quickly, not wanting to put it down.
As Poppy's new boyfriend suddenly starts becoming famous and she herself becomes well known, she has to deal with the bad side of it, like screaming fans, her private life becoming public and not getting time alone with Ty. The kiss off did a good job of showing that fame is not all glitz and glammer, there are down sides to it and as Poppy and Ty struggled with it, I was gripped to the book, hoping they'd be able to make it work as I really liked them as a couple.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, which I thought might go a different way but I was glad it never.
This is a book I'd recommend to all contemporary fans, it's YA but there's some swearing in it and some really funny moments.

My thoughts on the cover
I love this cover, it definitely gives a great feel for the book and I love how the title is on a concert ticket.

Favourite quotes

'Out of the corner of my eye, I was fully aware of Cam standing back, pretending he wasn't listening. But he was. He was listening to this older boy, probably a senior and a rock star with actual gigs tell me how awesome my song about Cam my cheating ex was. I tried to think of horrible things, of dying babies so I wouldn't smile too widely.'

'He kissed me right there in the street, with the sounds of conversation and laughter behind closed doors all around us.'

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Blog tour: The color of Grace - Character interview

Quickie interview.

What was the first thought that ran through your mind the first time you spotted Grace?

 -Well, after that blank-brain moment where you can't think much past "wow," I was pretty like "I'm in big trouble now" because I had this sense she was the one, you know.

 What is it about architecture you find so interesting?

 -Have you ever seen that movie, Mean Girls, where Lindsay Lohan is asked why she likes math and she answers, "because it's the same in every language"? Architecutre is kind of the same for me, except without the girly Lindsay vibe she put into the sentiment. I like how you could be anywhere in the world and still see something familiar, like the pyramids, or the Eiffel tower, The Great Wall of China, the Statue of Liberty, or Stonehenge.  I think it would be amazing if I could create something that could be known worldwide and throughout the ages.

What ran through your mind the night Grace showed up at your window?

-Midnight booty call?  No, no, I know she's not like that.  But the guy in me had to admit I did hope for a second there.  Then I saw her shivering without her coat and I just knew something was wrong...and no matter what it was, I would fix it.

Do you think you'll ever make up with Todd?

-Who?  Joking!  Actually, I still talk to him occassionally. I even thanked him for stabbing me in the back because in the end, everything ended up a lot better for me than it did for him. But we'll never be besties or anything. 

What do you see for the future with you and Grace?

-How does that one song go?  **Hums "Going to the Chapel..."** What can I say, when I meet the one, she is the one!

Ryder’s Character Profile

Name:  Ryder Yates

Age: Senior at Southeast High School

Height: “six feet even” --According to the basketball roster.

Hair color: “Silky-straight, sandy-colored hair…with the shaggy bangs pushed to the side just far enough to see out from under them.” --Grace

Eye color: “He had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, a pale, sparkly, jewel-kind of green, like the birthstone for August. Peridot. Yeah, he had peridot green eyes.”  --Grace

Dating Status: “He had a girlfriend.” --Grace

Distinguishing traits: “A scratch ran across his knuckles from his pinkie to his middle finger. The thumbnail had a bruise under it, as if he might’ve hit it with a hammer. They were one hundred percent boy hands. Nothing girly or feminine about them.” --Grace

Likes:  “Architecture.” --Ryder

Personality: “I think he’s totally blind to social status. In fact, I bet he’d befriend just about anyone. But that group leaches off him and clusters around him so tight he really doesn’t have a chance to see the rest of us through the trees.” --Alaina

Catch phrase: “I don’t know. Read it somewhere, I guess.” --Ryder

Best line: “You’re the type I want to be my last. You know...the settle down and marry sort. If you’re my first, then I won’t get to—I don’t know—sow any wild oats or anything.” --Ryder

Why should he get the girl? “I think it has something to do with my big green eyes.”  --Ryder

The color of Grace by Linda Kage

Check out my 4* review

Meet sixteen-year-old Grace Indigo:
Hey. When my mother remarried after thirteen years of being a widow, I had to move to a new town and enroll in a new school. Suddenly thrust into an entirely different kind of life, I just wanted to go home. I didn’t want to meet new people, didn’t want to leave my old friends, didn’t want to become a third wheel to my mom and her husband...and I really didn’t want to see Ryder Yates again. Ugh, I still don’t know why I turned down that too-good-to-be-true boy who flirted with me when we were attending separate schools.

But honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was worse.

Who knew becoming lost in a new life could help a girl find her true colors?