Blog Tour: Damned by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie

I'm today's Tour Stop for Damned, the sequel to Crusade. Please welcome Debbie Viguie & Nancy Holder!

Nancy Holder (left) has published sixty books and more than two hundred short stories. She has received four Bram Stoker awards for fiction from the Horror Writers Association, and her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. She has written or cowritten twenty Buffy and Angel projects. Her books from Simon Pulse include the New York Times bestselling series Wicked and the novel The Rose Bride. A graduate of the University of California at San Diego, Nancy is currently a writing teacher at the school. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, and their growing assortment of pets. Visit her at nancyholder.com.

Debbie ViguiÉ (right) holds a degree in creative writing from UC Davis. Her Simon Pulse books include the New York Times bestselling Wicked series and the Once upon a Time novels VIOLET EYES, SCARLET MOON and MIDNIGHT PEARLS. She lives in Florida with her husband Scott. Visit her at debbieviguie.com.

Each character in your Crusade Series is so unique with their backgrounds. Do you find it difficult writing different POVs? How do you keep your characters fresh?

Debbie: I love writing different POVs. That's what actually helps keep the story fresh and exciting for me. I have different songs I listen to that I think of as theme songs for the particular characters which helps me to write from their unique perspective.

Nancy: I also love writing different POV’s. I like to let the reader in on information and situations that a single POV character wouldn’t know. That way the reader is in the center of the entire story. They can anticipate what may happen next, in the same way that someone watching a movie whispers “Don’t go into the basement!” as a character does exactly that. I think that the epic nature of a series like Crusade demands that kind of breadth and scope.

I love the world that you have created in this series. How much research went into the setting that your characters live in? Did you find out anything interesting?

Debbie: A lot of research goes into the settings. The thing that amazed me the most was learning about the statue that depicted Lucifer in Madrid, the only such statue dedicated to the fallen angel in the world.

Nancy: I love doing research and I’m a history geek. I agree with Debbie that finding out about the fountain dedicated to Lucifer rocked my world. Today I learned a bunch of cool stuff about Leeds Castle.

For readers who are a little wary with all the vampire books in the market today, what makes this series so different? 

Debbie: First off, the vampires in the series are evil, much more old school. Second, we've worked to develop a very realistic feeling of what it would be like if the world was at war with these creatures. Many readers have told us it frightened them because they could see how easily our governments could bow or topple to such creatures. By bringing a global scale to the war and making it very reminiscent of other world wars I think we bring a sense of horrific realism to the story that people are really responding to.

Nancy: What Debbie said. Our story is about more than vampires. It’s about courage, life-and-death crises, honor, and sacrifice. And it’s as much about werewolves and witches as it is about vampires. We both love to write about witchcraft and magicks.

Who's your favorite character in this series so far and why? If you could pick an actor or actress that resembles that character who would it be?

Debbie: Holgar is my favorite character because he is so strong and so funny. I love how he uses humor to diffuse tense situations. I also love how when things spin out of control that very humor can sometimes get him into trouble. He is an alpha male who is also so tender and so compassionate. My favorite character to write, though, is Jamie. It's a lot of fun to work on his dialogue and see just how obnoxious he can be.

Nancy: I love writing Antonio. He is so kind and sincere, yet so passionate. I would cast the cover model of Damned to play the part. His first name is Sterling, and I know he was in L.A. during pilot season to audition for roles. Good luck, Sterling!

What can readers expect from you and your books next?

Debbie: We're working on the final book in the trilogy, Vanquished. It's going to be a wild ride!! Also, Nancy and I have a new series starting up in a couple of months, Wolf Springs Chronicles. Book 1 is called Unleashed and it deals with werewolves. For myself I have a new book series starting up in October with Kiss of Night, a vampire series aimed at the adult market.

Nancy: Vanquished has completely taken over our lives. We eat, sleep and dream Vanquished! Then once we let go of it (in other words, once our editor pries it out of our hands and tells us it’s going to press) we will turn all that energy into our next Wolf Springs Chronicles book. I have a number of short stories coming out, including a shared world vampire story for IDW. I’m very proud of my contribution to Dear Bully, an anthology of seventy pieces about bullying by seventy young adult authors. Dear Bully will come out in August--the same month as Damned!

Thanks for stopping by ladies!

To check out more events on The Damned Book Tour, click here.

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More about the book!

DAMNED (Crusade #2) by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguié

Pub. Date: August 2011

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Format: Hardcover , 544pp

Age Range: Young Adult

There is a fine line between love and sacrifice….

Antonio would do anything for his beloved fighting partner Jenn. He protects her, even suppresses his vampire cravings to be with her. Together, they defend humanity against the Cursed Ones. But tensions threaten to fracture their hunting team and his loyalty—his love—is called into question.

Jenn, the newly appointed Hunter, aches for revenge against the Cursed One who converted her sister. And with an even more sinister power on the rise, she must overcome her personal vendettas to lead her team into battle.

Antonio and Jenn need each other to survive, but evil lurks at every turn. With humanity’s fate hanging in the balance, they must face down the darkness…or die trying.

Blog Tour: Guest Post by Elise Allen (Author of Populazzi)

I'm today's stop on Elise Allen's Blog Tour for Populazzi. Please welcome Elise as she shares with readers the Popularity Tower levels in her book

Elise Allen has among the most random television-writing resumes ever, with credits that run the gamut from Cosby to Dinosaur Train. She recently fulfilled one of her many life’s ambitions by writing for the Muppets. Another ambition, anytime-access to Disneyland’s Club 33, is for the moment still a pipe dream. Elise has a sick penchant for running marathons, and can’t seem to stop even though fifteen really should be enough already. She lives in L.A. with her husband, daughter, and insatiable food-hound of a dog, Riley. For more, visit http://www.eliseallen.com/ or follow Elise on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EliseLAllen

Hi, Tina! Thanks for having me on the blog! Today I’m offering up a Quiz based on the Popularity Tower levels in my book, Populazzi.

Where would you place on the popularity tower? Read on and find out!

1. As you read this, you are surrounded by:

A. A crowd of friends and wanna-bes.

B. No idea – you’re too lost in your own deep thoughts to pay attention to what or who is around you.

C. One to three BFF’s, all laughing with you at inside jokes Star Wars Marathon!

D. A herd of life-sized Thestrals you built with Legos.


2. Your greatest fear is…

A. Waking up unpopular.

B. Probably going to happen. It’s a bleak world, and the worst thing you can imagine will most likely smack you in the face.

C. Your best friends moving away and leaving you with no one.

D. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” {You say this, of course, in a Yoda voice.}

3. The perfect boyfriend/girlfriend….

A. …will make everyone else seethe with jealousy.

B. …won’t want to talk much – would rather think deep thoughts and hook up.

C. …will totally fit in with my friends.

D. …can speak Klingon.


4. Your idea of a perfect Saturday night is:

A. Dancing at the hottest club in town.

B. Sitting outside and pondering the meaninglessness of it all.

C. Watching goofy movies and eating pizza with your closest friends

D. “Star Wars Marathon! All six movies, no stopping – who’s with me?”


5. What do you love most about high school?

A. Hello! You own the place.

B. Unfair question. You can’t love something you don’t think about, and you don’t think about high school. You have deeper things on your mind.

C. You love your group of friends, but the whole popularity thing is pretty awful.

D. High school sucks, but it’s a blip. You get to have real life -- in twenty years, your graduating class will wish they were you.

And now… THE RESULTS!

If you answered mostly A’s, you are a POPULAZZI, the highest level on the Popularity Tower. You are the social scene, and you’re adored and feared in equal parts by everyone else at school. Your status is your top priority, and you calculate every move to maintain it.

If you answered mostly B’s, you are a DANGER ZONE. You’re too deep, dark, and brooding to pay attention to the social scene, but it pays attention to you. You exude cool, even though you wouldn’t be caught dead actively trying to do so.

If you answered mostly C’s, you are a CUBBY CREW. These small groups of close friends are held together by common interests (i.e. Theater Geeks) or long-term BFF-ships. Together, a Cubby Crew’s members shine; without their group, each member struggles, lost in the wider social scene.

If you answered mostly D’s, you are a HAPPY HOPELESS. If you’re into something, you go 100% fanboy/fangirl, no matter how dorky it makes you look. Are you at the bottom of the popularity tower? Sure. Would you trade your life for the Populazzi’s? Never in a million years.

Where did you end up? Shoot me an email and let me know – I’d love to hear!

Want to know more about the Popularity Tower levels, and how one girl climbs her way through them? Check out Populazzi and give it a read!

Thanks for stopping by Elise!

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POPULAZZI by Elise Allen

Pub. Date: August 2011

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Format: Hardcover , 400pp

Age Range: Young Adult

What would you do if you had the chance to erase your past and reinvent yourself as the person you’ve always wanted to be? Would you grab it? Would you stick with it, no matter what the consequences?

Cara Leonard always wished she could be one of those girls: confident, self-possessed, and never at a loss for the perfect thing to say. One of the Populazzi.

It always seemed impossible… but now could be her chance.

When Cara moves to a new school just before junior year, her best friend urges her to seize the opportunity and change her life… with the help of The Ladder. Its rungs are relationships, and if Cara transforms herself into the perfect girlfriend for guys higher and higher on the Popularity Tower, she can reach the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi, the most popular girl in school.

The Ladder seems like a lighthearted social experiment — a straight climb up — but it quickly becomes gnarled and twisted. And when everything goes wrong, only the most audacious act Cara can think of has a chance of setting things even a little bit right.

Blog Tour: Guest post with Alyxandra Harvey (Author of Haunting Violet)

I'm today's stop on the Haunting Violet Blog Tour. Please welcome Alyxandra Harvey as she shares with readers about her favorite setting to write and how it influenced her writing.

Alyxandra Harvey lives in a stone Victorian house in Ontario, Canada with a few resident ghosts who are allowed to stay as they keep company manners. She loves medieval dresses, used to be able to recite all of The Lady of Shalott by Tennyson, and has been accused, more than once, of being born in the wrong century. She believes this to be mostly true except for the fact that she really likes running water, women’s rights, and ice cream.

HAUNTING VIOLET is her latest novel. You can find it in a bookstore near you!

Victorian Britain, and the 1870’s especially, are such an integral part of Haunting Violet that they may as well be a character in their own right. I have a very developed soft spot for the 19th century, from the waltzes and fireworks at Vauxhall to the Great Exhibition, to the later interest in the paranormal. There could be no other setting for my novel, I knew that as soon as Violet spoke to me. But since I knew more about the social mores of the Regency than the later Victorian years, I had to broaden my scope.

Since research is another love of mine, this was hardly a chore.

Proper historical research was mostly done through books. I used recent forays into Victorian society and séances and also the irreplaceable “Mrs. Beetons”. We invited a medium to have a sitting for us. A friend let me play with her set of Victorian camisoles, corset, gloves and parasol. I was able to admire tiny stitches and the thin white cotton and ribbon details. And having never been to Highgate Cemetery myself, I found YouTube videos surprisingly helpful!

For flavour and atmosphere, I watched movies . Let me underscore that one doesn’t watch movies for historical accuracy! Regardless, I especially love “Little Women” and “Possession”. And I apparently have a thing for striped Victorian dresses. Violet gets to wear one mostly because I love the carriage dress at the end of Legend of Sleepy Hollow—which isn’t remotely Victorian but it reminds me of another lovely striped dress from the end of “‘North and South”, which is definitely Victorian.

You just never know where you’ll find your inspiration and I’ve learned not to argue with the Muse. She likes poetry, Mary Oliver, the Bronte sisters, history, bustles, swords and striped dresses.

And Irish pickpockets of course!

 

Thanks for stopping by Alyx!

For more information about Alyxandra Harvey and her books, please visit her website here.

Blog Tour: Guest Post by Jennifer Jabaley (Author of Crush Control)

Please welcome Jennifer Jabaley as she shares with readers about Crush Do's & Don'ts.

Born in New York and raised in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Jennifer Jabaley is a graduate of James Madison University and Southern College of Optometry. She began writing in 2006 and tries to manage optometry, writing and motherhood. She lives in Blue Ridge, Georgia with her husband and two children.

CRUSH CONTROL is her latest novel. You can find it in a bookstore near you!

Do's and Don'ts around your Crush

What if the gorgeous guy in your history class doesn't even know you exist? How do you get his attention? If you were Willow Grey, you'd lower your voice and lull your crush into a trance then hypnotize him to think you were the one for him. Oh, if only we all had the ability to control our circumstances! But what to do if you don't possess such unique abilities? What should you do to get inside your crush's head?

Be sweet.Sure the antics of the mean girl may attract people's attention, but ultimately, the good guys want to date nice girls.

Be the one to start the conversation. Don't wait around for him to say 'hi!' If the idea of saying hi makes you squirm, then ask a question - that guarantees a response!

Be confident. Don't slump! How will he notice you if you're hiding in the corner? The way you feel about yourself has a huge impact on how others view you! If you're confident, people will view you as having it all together and under control.

Be fun to be around. Keep the tone light. Anyone wearing a smile is more approachable than one who is not. Create an inside joke with your crush. And don't forget to flirt!

Sure, maybe you don't have a swinging watch and an ability to hypnotize your crush, but with some simple do's and don'ts, your crush will notice you in no time!

Thanks for stopping by Jennifer!

For more information about Jennifer Jabaley and her books, please visit her website here.

Check out more Blog Stops @ The Story Siren - today & The Electrical Book Café - June 12

Blog Tour: Guest Post by Dawn Metcalf (Author of Luminous)

Flowing from Electrifying Reviews, the next stop on the MundiMoms' LUMINOUS Blog Tour is Fantastic Book Review.

Dawn Metcalf has no good excuse for the way she writes. She lived in a normal, loving, suburban home, studied hard, went to college, went to graduate school, got married, had babies, and settled down in northern Connecticut. Despite this wholesome lifestyle, she has clearly been corrupted by fairy tales, puppet visionaries, British humour, and graphic novels. As a result, she writes dark, quirky, and sometimes humorous speculative fiction.

LUMINOUS is her debut novel. It will be released June 30, 2011.

Shape-shifting in LUMINOUS

When I think of shape-shifting, I think of werewolves. Or werecats, werearmadillos, or werepandas, depending on your bent. Of course, every time I read the word "were[anything]" I immediately think of the Young Frankenstein bit: "Werewolf!" "There, wolf! There, castle!" "Why are you talking like that?" "...I thought you wanted me to." so there you go.

While Consuela does create skins that allow her the ability to become one with fire and water and change forms into things like a flock of butterflies, I'd never considered that shape-shifting as much as camouflaging to blend into the surroundings, specifically those surroundings that, at a given moment, were present and convenient to save someone's life. Yes, Consuela rode the winds in a skin of air, but as Tender asks her in the story, is it that she's become air or is she wearing air? Is Consuela the air or has the air become her? It's a fine line, but I think of it as more the case of her borrowing what's around her to cloak herself in the environment rather than her actually becoming something else entirely. She doesn't get that distinction, she feels the power, the rush, but as the author sitting firmly in the comfy chair in my office, I can make these boring, analytical calls. (Not born of envy in the slightest. Nope nope nope.)

On the other hand, there's Joseph Crow. He can shape-shift and while it's not as loup-garou, I did borrow from a lot of actual Native American totems and one particular type of vision quest ritual in order to make his power feel real. Joseph Crow is a character born out of my love and study of the Plains Indian tribes of North America, another lingering memory from college, and my work with the Native American Art Gallery during the birth of the White Buffalo in nearby Wisconsin (a pretty wild time to be connected to the community, let me tell you!), add my lifelong love of mythology and cultural myths, and--oddly enough--a research project I was doing with a professor at Northwestern University examining self- and body-image. I'd been doing many interviews in niche populations and I'd met this one man who had scars on his chest and he explained that it was from an old ritual (one that I recognized from books) that he used to have out-of-body experiences; essentially, he got high through pain. It was a striking concept and the idea obviously stuck with me. I borrowed this as the trigger for Joseph Crow, extending it to include why he has so many body piercings, and linked it to his transformation into one of the totemic animals in the directional sphere (north, south, east, west, upper, lower, and within). Much like I had with Dia de los Muertos and Consuela, I borrowed heavily from the colors and iconic imagery associated with the Native American Plains' traditions so that I could anchor Joseph Crow in resonance and history, so that his power in the Flow was something that was, in some sense, real. Joseph Crow can transform into these animals as well as become a sort of amalgam of all of them: a terrifying specter of all the protective animals. So while I credit the origins of both characters with the traditions of calaveras or carvings that have existed previously, my aim was to create "modern myths" of a sort of guardian Lady of the Dead and an awesomely powerful totemic knight.

Those came from between my ears.

Thanks for stopping by Dawn!

For more information about Dawn Metcalf and her books, please visit her website here.

This guest post on the MundiMoms' LUMINOUS Blog Tour was brought to you by the letter: U.

Collect all the letters along the blog tour, unscramble the puzzle, and win a secret surprise as well as an extra entry in the LUMINOUS Grand Prize Giveaway, June 30th! Details at http://www.dawnmetcalf.com/.

Blog Tour: The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge

Please welcome Caitlin today as she talks about the creation of Lovecraft from her current novel The Iron Thorn.

Caitlin Kittredge is the author of the Nocturne City series, as well as several short stories. She is the proud owner of an English degree, two cats, a morbid imagination, a taste for black clothing, punk rock, and comic books. She's lucky enough to write full time and watches far too many trashy horror movies. Visit her website at www.caitlinkittredge.com to learn more.

Creating Lovecraft

Lovecraft, a city in my novel The Iron Thorn, was not the first fictional city I created. (It also, I found out later, shares a name with the small town in Joe Hill's fantastic graphic novel series Locke & Key. Sorry, Joe!)(And if you like my books, you'll love the series, and should go pick it up.)(Okay, Shameless Plug App. deactivated.)

I'd created a city before, for my very first novel, and I learned a few things the hard way—keep track of what goes where. Make a map so you don't have any crazy geography screwups. But in a deeper sense, and more importantly, you have to understand how cities evolve, how neighborhoods come to be. You have to know your history, and when you create a city out of whole cloth—all of that history comes from you.

Scary proposition. So when it came time to create Lovecraft, I knew I needed some touchstones with the real world, both so my readers could connect with this creepy, dark, steam-driven metropolis and so that I had a baseline for how my city had evolved.

There are so many fantastic cities in the real world, full of secrets and wonders hidden from the everyday eye. Portland, Oregon sports a network of Shanghai tunnels unchanged since the 1880s. My home town of Boston used to house its city morgue in a building modeled after an Egyptian tomb (supposedly haunted, of course), with tunnels to nearby hospitals so that the cadavers would never come in view of the public. Everyone knows about New York's abandoned subway stops, populated by an undergound of off-the-grid subterranean dwellers. London has buried entire rivers as it grows and grows, and you may well dig into your back garden in some older parts of the city and find a plague pit or a forgotten cemetery. Glasgow, Scotland is home to an enormous cemetery, a necropolis buried inside a hill which is surrounded on all sides by a river. For a speculative fiction author, it's not hard to imagine what kind of paranormal path any of those tidbits could lead.

My other city had been based on my then-home of Seattle, with overtones of San Francisco. Lots of hills, trees, pocket neighborhoods, and fog—a very noir kind of city, for a very noir kind of story. Lovecraft, I knew, had to be different. It had to be dark, the kind of place where monsters could come out of the darkness, the kind of place with a network of underground tunnels, the sort of place where you could rub elbows with air pirates as easily as genius professors and their magic-powered machines. I went back to my roots, picking a colonial city on the East Coast for my footprint—anyone who looks at the map of Lovecraft in the front of The Iron Thorn will recognize the shadow of Boston. I took my history back to the inciting events of the novel, which occurred some 70-80 years before the start of the novel. I decided where the bad parts of town were, where you could find entrances to an underground city populated by ghouls, where the steam-driven engine that powers the entire city would reside. I decided what bits of real history I could crib to use in the alternate history that The Iron Thorn is built around. I drew a lot of maps. A lot of maps.

So how do you create a city? Spend a lot of time on the details. Get everything right. But more than drawing maps on graph paper (which delights the former D&D nerd who still lives inside me) and deciding on the timeline of your history, you have to make your city alive. You must be able to imagine the smells, the sounds, the feel of brick under your feet and the fog on your face. If your city isn't alive, you story set there will suffer. Don't be afraid to spend time in your city—ie, write material that won't make it into the book, but will help you achieve that spark, that life, that helps make unreal cities seem the realest of all.

What are some of your favorite fictional cities or towns, either wholly made up or fictional versions of places such as London, New York or Los Angeles?

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THE IRON THORN by Caitlin Kittredge
Pub. Date: February 2011
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Format: Hardcover , 512pp
Age Range: Young Adult Series: Iron Codex Series

In the city of Lovecraft, the Proctors rule and a great Engine turns below the streets, grinding any resistance to their order to dust. The necrovirus is blamed for Lovecraft's epidemic of madness, for the strange and eldritch creatures that roam the streets after dark, and for everything that the city leaders deem Heretical—born of the belief in magic and witchcraft. And for Aoife Grayson, her time is growing shorter by the day.

Aoife Grayson's family is unique, in the worst way—every one of them, including her mother and her elder brother Conrad, has gone mad on their 16th birthday. And now, a ward of the state, and one of the only female students at the School of Engines, she is trying to pretend that her fate can be different. 

The next stop on THE IRON THORN Blog Tour is Confessions of a Bookaholic—Saturday, April 16th
http://www.totalbookaholic.com/

Blog Tour: Sean Griswold's Head by Lindsey Leavitt

I'm today's stop for Lindsey Leavitt's current novel SEAN GRISWOLD's HEAD. Lindsey will be answering questions about her books.

Lindsey Leavitt is a former elementary school teacher and present-day writer/mom to three (mostly) adorable little girls. She is married to her high-school lab partner and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is the author of the PRINCESS FOR HIRE series and SEAN GRISWOLD'S HEAD.

SEAN GRISWOLD'S HEAD is in stores now.

What do you love most about writing for young adults?
It doesn't feel like work. I love the words, I love the readers. I can't even name one thing, I love it so!

Did you draw on any experiences based on someone you know or events in your own life that helped you write this book?
I think any author will tell you there are pieces of us in all our writing. I lived in PA a few years ago, so setting the story there was easy for me, not to mention I thought the winter to spring transition there served the story well. I didn't know at first what Payton's problems in her home life would be, but I came up with MS because it's such an unpredictable disease, and she's a girl who relies on predictablity. My father-in-law has MS, and blessedly he's doing well, but I have seen how the symptoms and uncertainty impacts the family. Oh, and my husband is big into cycling, so he was my expert on all of that. Yes, girls. He does spandex proud.

What was one of the most surprising things you learned while writing Sean Griswold's Head?
Payton's organizational, Type A personality wasn't clear enough in the first couple of drafts. I was trying to figure out how to show this, when I started doodling a pie chart. AND THERE IT WAS--the focus journal exercises became graphic organizers. I'm a chaotic person, so I was pleased that a nice and neat idea like that came to me.

As far as writing, how different is this book from your Princess for Hire series? Did you have to change your style of writing much?
I think if you read one book, and then the other, you can tell that it's the same author.

They both have that mix of humor and heart. It's just what I do.

That said, they are different genres and different audiences. P4H is tween fantasy, SGH is YA contemporary. So I did have to switch up my style, and writing in the first person present helped me get to the immediacy of Payton's situation. The humor in P4H is more slapstick and crazy situations. The humor in SGH is all about Payton, her observations, and how she views the world.

What's next for you in the future? What direction do you see your books heading?
I like both strands in writing, and I hope to continue in both.

For my younger readers, I have two more Princess for Hire books coming out, with ideas for additional tween adventures.

For fans of SEAN GRISWOLD'S HEAD, I just sold another book called AUTHENTICALLY VINTAGE, about a girl who decides to go vintage - forswearing 21st century technology and accomplishing the goals her grandma set for herself at 16 - when she discovers her boyfriend cheating on her with a cyber wife.


Thanks Lindsey,

For more info on Lindsey Leavitt and her books, please visit her website here.

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SEAN GRISWOLD'S HEAD by Lindsey Leavitt

Pub. Date: March 2011

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Format: Hardcover , 272pp

Age Range: Young Adult

According to her guidance counselor, fifteen-year-old Payton Gritas needs a focus object—an item to concentrate her emotions on. It's supposed to be something inanimate, but Payton decides to use the thing she stares at during class: Sean Griswold's head. They've been linked since third grade (Griswold-Gritas—it's an alphabetical order thing), but she's never really known him.

The focus object is intended to help Payton deal with her father's newly diagnosed multiple sclerosis. And it's working. With the help of her boy-crazy best friend Jac, Payton starts stalking—er, focusing on—Sean Griswold . . . all of him! He's cute, he shares her Seinfeld obsession (nobody else gets it!) and he may have a secret or two of his own.

In this sweet story of first love, Lindsey Leavitt seamlessly balances heartfelt family moments, spot-on sarcastic humor, and a budding young romance.

Want More?
Take a look inside of SEAN GRISWOLD'S HEAD here.

Blog Tour & Contest: The Way of the Dragon by Chris Bradford

I'm today's Blog stop for The Way of the Dragon's Blog Tour. Chris Bradford will be telling readers about the ways of the ninja.

Chris Bradford is the author of the award-winning Young Samurai series, a tale of adventure, friendship and heroism that follows an English boy as he strives to become the first foreign samurai. (www.youngsamurai.com)


Chris is a black belt in martial arts and lives in a village in West Sussex, England, with his wife. He is currently training in ninjutsu.

Books in series: The Way of the Warrior, The Way of the Sword and The Way of the Dragon.

The Way of the Ninja!

By Chris Bradford, author of the Young Samurai series

In The Way of the Dragon, the third book in the Young Samurai series, my hero Jack Fletcher confronts his worst enemy – the ninja known as Dragon Eye!

Legend says the ninja are the deadliest and most feared warriors to have ever existed. In writing the first two books in the Young Samurai series, I used my in-depth knowledge of Japan, its history and the martial arts of the samurai to give an authentic flavor to this fantasy action-adventure.

But I still knew little of the ninja. So I went on a journey to discover the truth behind the myths. Joining a ninjutsu club, I spent the last year training in the arts of these elusive “shadow warriors”.

Their secrets are now woven into my story. Here is a little of what I learnt:


Who are the ninja?
They are Japanese spies and assassins, but their history is shrouded in mystery. Many believe the ninja come from banished warlords and mystic priests of China. Others suggest their origins lay in rebel farmers. While some believe the ninja are descended from Tengu - the mythical devil bird!

How different are ninja and samurai?
The ninja are as opposite to the samurai as the moon is to the sun. While the samurai were the ruling warrior class, the ninja tended to be farmers. The samurai were loyal to their daimyo (lord), fearless in battle and faced their opponents with honor. The ninja, on the other hand, were mercenaries who switched loyalties easily and would prefer to deliver a knife in the back than fight face-to-face.

Did the ninja have no morals?
The samurai believed the ninja had no honor, since they didn’t follow bushido (The Way of the Warrior), the code which promoted respect, loyalty and courage. But the ninja weren’t without morals. A true ninja observed ninniku, that of ‘cultivating a pure and compassionate heart’.

What did ninja do?
They worked as undercover spies and assassins. Unless the mission required it, the ninja preferred not to kill, since such an act would give away their presence.

Who did they work for?
Samurai often hired them. But the ninja’s secret operations conflicted with the samurai ideal and, therefore, the ninja were hated and feared by the samurai.

What is ninjutsu?
Ninjutsu means ‘The Art of Stealth’. It’s the martial art of the ninja and encompasses 18 different disciplines.

What training does a ninja do?
Like a samurai they’d train in sword combat and hand-to-hand fighting, but a young ninja would also have to learn such skills as stealth walking (shinobi aruki), the blending of poisons (dokujutsu), the use of fire and explosives (kayakujutsu) and the art of invisibility (onshinjutsu).

Can a ninja really be invisible?

The ninja were skilled in the art of deception. By disguising themselves as priests, farmers and even samurai, they essentially became invisible by avoiding detection.

Sometimes during a fight, a ninja would throw metsubishi (blinding powder) into the eyes of their enemy. When their victim had recovered, it was as if the ninja had disappeared in a cloud of smoke!

What weapons did the ninja use?
For a ninja, anything could be used as a weapon – a rice flail, a fan and even a chopstick! Their most recognizable weapons are:
• shuriken – metal throwing stars used for distraction, wounding and sometimes poisoning;
• nunchuka – two sticks connected at the ends by a short chain or rope, developed from the farmer’s rice flail;
• ninjato – a ninja sword, shorter and straighter than the samurai’s katana with an oversized square hand guard. The ninja didn’t have the same attachment to a sword as a samurai. For a samurai, his sword was his honor, even his soul. But for a ninja, the sword was just another tool.

Does ninja magic exist?
The ninja were capable of many amazing feats and magic was certainly one of them. It’s believed they could read minds, heal wounds and even control the elements. But you need to train as a ninja to learn such mystical arts…

Read The Way of the Dragon and discover the way of the ninja!

For competitions, samurai school and more, visit http://www.youngsamurai.com/


Thanks for stopping by Chris!

For more info on Chris Bradford and his books, please visit his website here.

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**CONTEST CLOSED**

 

Win The Way of the Dragon!

THE WAY OF THE DRAGON by Chris Bradford

June 1613.

Japan is threatened with war and Jack Fletcher is facing his greatest battle yet. Samurai are taking sides and, as the blood begins to flow, Jack’s warrior training is put to the ultimate test. His survival – and that of his friends – depends upon him mastering the Two Heavens, the secret sword technique of the legendary samurai Masamoto Takeshi. But first Jack must recover his father’s prize possession from the deadly ninja Dragon Eye. Can Jack defeat his ruthless enemy? Or will the ninja complete his mission to kill the young samurai...

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Contest ends @ 11:59pm (CST) February 18, 2011. U.S. & Canada Residents Only (Sorry!)

**If you are an international resident and have someone in the states that I could mail the prize to, then you can enter the contest**

Blog Tour: Interview with Sarwat Chadda, Author of Dark Goddess

I'm today's blog stop for Sarwat Chadda's DARK GODDESS, the sequel to DEVIL'S KISS (9/1/2009). Sarwat is a recurring face on my blog and I'm happy to have him here again to answer questions about his books.

Sarwat Chadda was brought up on the adventures of the great medieval heroes like Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. His passion for storytelling grew from his love for the history, culture and myths of Europe and the Middle East.

Sarwat used to be an engineer, working on projects like the Channel Tunnel and Hong Kong airport, but now he writes full time. He has travelled widely, from China to India, from Nicaragua to the Yemen, but there’s no place like home, and home is London. Devil's Kiss was his first novel.

DARK GODDESS is in a bookstore near you!

Which book was harder to write Devil's Kiss or Dark Goddess? Please explain.

Dark Goddess by far. There were practical details like deadlines. It took me four years to write Devil’s Kiss so I suffered from the classic ‘second album’ problem, how to produce something to the same standard in six months?

Then there were emotional issues regarding the characters. Billi had suffered terribly by the end of DK, so I needed to acknowledge that, and move her character on without losing what was best about her form the first book. Then DG is set in Russia. DK was based in London, my home city. Now the standard had been set, I needed to write the second setting with equal authenticity. The best way to do that was to spend a week in Russia, visiting the sights and getting a feel for the place. Worked wonders.

If you could do it over again, would you change anything in any of your books?
I could certainly have written DK even tighter, though it’s a slim book already. But in contrast I feel I’d liked to have been a little bit more patient, let the story unfold at a slower pace. If anything the book’s too hectic, but that lean and mean pace has its own appeal.

There are alot of strong heroines in today's YA books, what makes Billi so special/different from the rest?

Her lack of supernatural ability. At the end of the day Billi’s just human. She bleeds, she feels doubt, pain and has no special get out clause. Death is ever present and the end of Devil’s Kiss demonstrates people close to her will die.

In a fight to the death - who would win Billi or Buffy?

Does Buffy fight to the death? Okay, if you’re a vampire or some supernatural beasty, sure, the Slayer will slay you. I can’t recall Buffy ever killing a normal human. That could work to Billi’s advantage.

In a straight fight, it’ll have to be Ms. Summers. She’s superhuman after all and has years more combat experience. Remember when she sparred with Riley? Even holding back she totally kicked his butt. And Riley is at the top of his game human soldier, like Billi. But I think Buffy would hesitate to kill a fifteen year old girl like Billi while we’ve seen, under the right circumstances, Billi’s willing to kill anyone.

If your book was optioned for a movie, who would best fit the characters?My eldest daughter for Billi, or my youngest if it was in development hell for ages. James Purefoy as Arthur. Always saw Gwaine as either Robert Duvall or Ray Winstone. Mike would be someone like Ben Barnes, we saw he has a great dark side in Dorian Grey. Kay was based on a young David Bowie, we need someone pale and very interesting. Ivan’s based on a young Christian Bale, he’s got those razor-sharp cheekbones.

Would you like to share with your readers about what's next for you and your upcoming books? I’d love there to be a Billi Book 3, but that depends on how Devil’s Kiss and Dark Goddess do sales-wise. The fundamentals like setting and plot are in place, I just need an excuse to write it. Meanwhile I’ll soon be making an announcement (I hope!) on a new series I’ve been working on. It’s set in the same world as Billi SanGreal and there was a very subtle hint to it in Devil’s Kiss. A boy protagonist this time around but there’s a girl assassin involved who’d give Billi (and Buffy, while we’re at it) a real run for her money.


Well there you have it, I can only hope that we'll get to see more of Billi and crew. You can check out my review of DARK GODDESS here. Thanks for stopping by Sarwat! For more info on Sarwat Chadda and his books, please visit his website here.

Blog Tour: Solitary by Alexander Gordon Smith

SOLITARY: Escape from Furnace 2  by Alexander Gordon Smith

Pub. Date: December 2010

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Format: Hardcover , 240pp

Age Range: 12 and up

Series: Escape From Furnace Series , #2

Source: Publisher

Alex Sawyer and his mates should have known there was no way out of Furnace Penitentiary. Their escape attempt only lands them deeper in the guts of this prison for young offenders, and then into solitary confinement. And that's where a whole new struggle begins—a struggle not to let the hellish conditions overwhelm them. Because before another escape attempt is even possible, they must first survive the nightmare that now haunts their endless nights.

 
After reading LOCKDOWN, I couldn't wait to delve into SOLITARY. You would have had to pry my hands off this book - there was no escape for me because I was so immersed into the sinister setting that Gordon had created. I lived and breathed the disturbing evil that inhabited Furnace.

The writing just lures you in page by page and I would often find myself saying, “just one more chapter,” and the next thing I know, I've read more chapters. I couldn't put this mind boggling thriller down! There were times when I felt like I was watching a movie on the big screen as I could vividly picture the monstrosities of Furnace as if it was a living and breathing thing.

As for the protagonist, I was constantly rooting for Alex as he tried to survive in this hellhole. Just when you think it's safe, Gordon wretches it up another notch and leaves you with a jaw dropper. To survive at Furnace, Alex and the other prisoners have to go to hell and back and even then death seems like a blessing rather than being locked up for life - especially when you know death is breathing down your neck.

Gordon created a fantastical hellhole with a great cast of characters that will leave readers begging for more. I look forward to seeing what the next installment has in store for Alex!

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

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Check out the book trailer for Lockdown!

Blog Tour: Entice by Carrie Jones

ENTICE (Need, #3) by Carrie Jones

Pub. Date: December 2010

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Format: Hardcover , 272pp
Age Range: Young Adult

Source: Publisher

Zara and Nick are soul mates, meant to be together forever. But that's not quite how things have worked out. For starters, well, Nick is dead. Supposedly, he's been taken to a mythic place for warriors known as Valhalla, so Zara and her friends might be able to get him back. But it's taking time, and meanwhile a group of evil pixies is devastating Bedford, with more teens going missing every day. An all-out war seems imminent, and the good guys need all the warriors they can find. But how to get to Valhalla? And even if Zara and her friends discover the way, there's that other small problem: Zara's been pixie kissed. When she finds Nick, will he even want to go with her? Especially since she hasn't turned into just any pixie. . . She's Astley's queen.

ENTICE picks up where CAPTIVATE left off with Zara & friends attending the winter ball while patrolling for evil pixies who were freed by the pixie king, Frank. In this installment, Zara is adjusting to her new abilities. She's stronger, faster & her senses are sharper - All part of being a pixie queen. As exciting as those abilities sound, Zara has a lot on her plate. With kids continuing to come up missing in her town, Zara has plenty to worry about. On top of protecting the students in her town from the bad pixies, she's still trying to find out how to get to Valhalla to free Nick and unfortunately that's with the help of her new king Astley, whom Zara still doesn't trust fully. Plus, she has to deal with the possible fallout of her were grandmother finding out that she's a pixie now. What is a girl to do?

I enjoyed Zara's fierceness in this installment. She was kicking pixie butt left & right. She was determined to do whatever it took to keep her town safe while trying to save Nick, even though she still had doubts about being a pixie & who to trust. What I found interesting in this installment was how Nick wasn't a concern for me. I can only blame that on the Hotness that is Astley. Don't get me wrong now, I loved Nick in the earlier installments but Astley has this mysteriousness about him. Just like Zara, I didn't know what his motives were. I do love the whole regal persona he throws off. Plus, he seemed to sincerely care about Zara and put her needs and safety above all.

This installment took Zara through the ringer. Danger was always one step behind her and the ones she cared about. She had to face so much for one so young. But she stayed true to her character through it all. I’m curious to see what will happen in the next installment. Carrie Jones continues to pull me deeper into this series with her twists and turns. I’m just glad I can look forward to reading more about Zara and the gang.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

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Check out the Book Trailer!

Check out the facebook pages for Bloomsbury Teen & The Need Pixies to find out more info on upcoming books and The Need Series.