Blog tour: The Switch Up - Katy Cannon guest post

I am thrilled to be taking part in the blog tour for Katy Cannon's new book 'The Switch Up'. I finished reading this a few days ago and absolutely loved it. Don't forget to stop by the blog next week to read my full review. It's the perfect summer read to pack in your suitcase!

For today's blog tour stop, I have a fantastic guest post from Katy herself. It's the ultimate 'Surviving Summer: An Introvert's Guide and it's a great read that I could really identify with.

Summer is a great time for getting together with friends, going out and doing things, and making the most of the great weather. Of course, for introverts (like me) it’s also a time to start panicking about being expected to do All The Peopling All The Time.

Don’t get me wrong; I like people, I like spending time with friends, and I like getting out and doing things. I even like sunshine, as long as I have enough sunscreen on. I just find all of the above – what I call Peopling - mentally and physically exhausting, after a while.
So, over the years, I’ve come up with my own methods for keeping my summers fun and enjoyable, not overwhelming. Here they are:

1. Build In Downtime. If you know that spending a lot of time with loads of people is going to leave you exhausted, try to schedule your summer so you have breaks between big social gatherings. This might take a bit of planning, but having a day – or even a morning, afternoon or evening – to yourself between commitments with friends or family will help you re-energise and enjoy your time with others more.

2. Make Your Own Fun. You don’t have to spend your time alone moping in your room or doing homework though (well, not all of it, anyway). Try jotting down some activities that do give you more energy and make you happy. Mine include reading, getting outside in the sunshine for a walk (or more reading), listening to podcasts, going to the cinema - or a museum or exhibition - by myself, following an online yoga video, and daydreaming (which sometimes turns into napping). Whatever your list is, having it there in front of you when you get your downtime will remind you of all the fun things you can use it for.

3. Pick Your People. Even for us introverts, some people are more draining than others – and a select few can even make us feel better than or as good as being alone! So pick who you spend your summer with carefully. Okay, so you can’t choose your family, and friendship groups often include at least one person who doesn’t thrill you, but just thinking about how different people make you feel can be a starting point. Even a subtle shift towards spending more time with those people who energize you, and building in more downtime between time spent with those who don’t, can help improve your summer.

4. Set Goals and Say No. These two sort of go together. If you’re anything like me, saying ‘no’ to people who want to spend time with you can be difficult. I’ve found that what helps me is having a really good reason I can’t hang out. So, I always keep a summer goals list – maybe a handful of books I want to read, an exhibition I want to visit, a project at home, that sort of thing. Then, when I need to not be Peopling, I can say with confidence that I have something else I really need to do that day. Because I do. It’s on my list, and it matters to me – and friends will respect that. (Really good friends will also totally understand if you tell them ‘I can’t People today. Can we People tomorrow?’ incidentally.)

5. Be You – and Love It. Above all, embrace being an introvert! All it means is that you find more energy in time alone than in large groups – like a third or more of the population. Introverts tend to be more thoughtful and reflective – which can lead to being more creative, more empathetic and able to build long lasting friendships. So, love who you are, and love summer again!

Huge thanks to Katy for writing such a lovely guest post and don't forget to check out all of the other stops on the blog tour. My review will be going live on the blog on publication day (13th June).

Guest post: Bound trilogy - Sarah Bryant

I have a wonderful guest post today from author Sarah Bryant who has written a fantastic piece about how she made the transition from adult to young-adult novels.  Sarah is the author of two of my favourite books of the year so far, 'Bound' and 'Riven' which form part of her brilliant Bound trilogy.

 

I think everyone from my publisher to my mom raised their eyebrows when, after four and a half (more on the half later) ‘grownup’ novels, I dropped everything to write a YA paranormal romance. But the truth is, each of those four and a half novels could have been – was even trying to be – a YA novel. They all have teenage heroines, aside from one who’s just turned twenty-one and is still very much a girl. The heroines all have unusual, sometimes supernatural abilities or talents which lead them to unusual, sometimes epic, destinies. And they all find true love in the process.

But these books are also pretty heavy on politics and religion and history and a lot of other things that don’t really cut it in the YA market. So I guess the obvious question is why I chose to turn what could have been relatively simple teen fiction into much more complicated – and possibly less saleable – adult stuff. The answer is partly that my publisher didn’t do children’s books before I talked them into printing ‘Bound’. But mostly it’s because, up until quite recently, I was too much of a literary snob to write YA. And the reason for that goes way back to my childhood.

Teen paranormal romance has been my favorite guilty pleasure since I was far too young to be reading it, and I’ve been writing it since I exhausted the local library’s collection, circa age twelve. I finished my first novel, a YA paranormal romance, at age sixteen, and very nearly had it published. The ‘very nearly’, however, was my downfall. If it had seen print then, I probably would have embraced the genre as legitimate and continued down that road.

Instead, I went to an Ivy League university to study English literature, and spent the next four years reading and analyzing literary heavyweights. There was no time to read outside the curriculum, and there was certainly no Teen Literature 101 on the menu. Likewise, the creative writing masters’ program I attended afterward would have laughed me out the door if I’d put the first chapter of ‘Bound’ in front of them.

By the time I got my MLitt, I was fully convinced that I’d never be taken seriously as a writer unless I wrote about weighty ‘grownup’ things like politics and religion and history. So that’s what I did…except, somehow, my books kept being about teenage girls. And there were always ghosts and dreams, monsters and prophecies and inexplicable hands of fate somewhere in the mix. I was half way through novel number five, another weighty historical that happened to feature a teenage girl with paranormal tendencies, when I picked up ‘Twilight’.
I admit, I was blown away – but not in a fangirl kind of a way. In fact, while the story was a good, solid Gothic, I couldn’t love it because I didn’t much like either Bella (insipid and spineless) or Edward (controlling and paternalistic). What really fired me up was the book’s runaway popularity, not just with its intended audience, but with their mums and older sisters and grandmothers and, no doubt, a few boyfriends who would never admit to it. At last, it seemed, the rest of the world had figured out what I’d known all along: if you want a fast, well-plotted escape from reality, look no further than the local library’s YA section. So maybe it was time for me to write one.

I already had pages of notes for a book about a fallen angel which had never quite panned out, plus more material from a stalled web-based project on the same topic. Both had misfired, I think, because I was trying to frame them for an adult audience. Filtered through the perception of an innocent teenage girl, though, these germs of a story suddenly leapt into 3D Technicolor reality. Hot, angsty fallen angel = adolescent girl’s dream guy. But where to begin?

At first I toyed around with a historical setting, since that was what I’ve always written. Immediately I got bogged down in the details, and my husband-cum-chief-editor said, “Don’t you think kids would relate to it better if it’s set in the present?” That was maybe his best advice ever. As soon as I set it in the present day, in a place I knew very well, ‘Bound’ basically wrote itself. Four months after that conversation – compare to two years for most of my others – I had a finished book, and a brand new view of what it takes to make a good one.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll write nothing but YA ever again. In fact, when I finish the ‘Bound’ trilogy I plan to go back to grownup book 4.5, and hopefully make a go of it. But I’m also glad to have come out of my YA closet at last. True love, after all, is a rare gift, and should never be denied.

 

Thank you Sarah for a wonderful guest post!  Don't forget that you can also find out more about Sarah and her books on her website or by following her on Twitter @Sarah_Bryant_C

Guest post - Shattered Dreams - Ellie James

I have a brilliant guest post today from the fabulous Ellie James, author of one of my favourite books so far this year 'Shattered Dreams' which is published by Quercus.  Here's a bit more about her Midnight Dragonfly series -  

The firstborn daughter, of the firstborn daughter, of the firstborn daughter, sixteen year old psychic Trinity Monsour has a connection to the Other Side. She knows secrets and truths she shouldn’t, feels emotions that do not belong to her, and see events that have yet to happen. They come to her as glimpses, shadowy, disjointed snapshots that flicker through her dreams. Some terrify: a girl screaming, a knife lifting, a body in the grass. But others--the dark, tortured eyes and the shattering kiss, the promise of forever--whisper to her soul.

They come without warning. They come without detail.

But they always mean the same thing: The clock is ticking, and only Trinity can stop it. 

Ellie has written a really interesting piece about her love of the unexplained and how that gave birth to the character of Trinity, so without further ado it's over to Ellie.  

 

Thank you so much for inviting me onto your blog!

 

I’ve always been fascinated by the unexplained. I believe we, as humans, are much more capable than we realize, and that no one holds us back more than ourselves. For the most part, we like explanations and evidence. We like proof. In the absence of that, we tend to dismiss fantastical claims. If it can’t be seen or touched, it must not be real. And yet…

• I routinely pick up the phone to call someone at the exact second they’re calling me.
• After my daughter was born, for the first few weeks we were frequently awakened by the sound of my recently deceased grandmother’s favorite lullaby coming through the nursery monitor…even though we had not pushed the play button and there was no automatic timer to turn on the CD
• One night, my daughter, then 3, woke me up to tell me how excited she was that her twin brother (whom we lost during her pregnancy) was finally going to come live with us—this before we’d told her we were expecting again, and before we knew we were having a son.
• When I was twelve weeks along, a friend who has a history of “knowing things” told me my son would be born severely premature—and he was.
• Another friend who talked to her mom every evening at 5pm continued to receive those calls for weeks after her mom passed away, except instead of a voice she heard only silence.
• My aunt knew her way around an old Irish castle she’d never visited or read about.
• My grandparents’ wedding picture really did fall over, in a quiet still room, the same instant my grandmother took her last breath.

Ask anyone and they probably have at least one woo-woo tale. Cold spots in the middle of a warm room. Intuition about future events. Blasts of mysterious emotion...

 

Given my love of the unexplained, it’s no surprise that the character of Trinity came to me in a dream, sneaking into a beautiful abandoned mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans. I was right there as she and her friends embarked upon a dangerous game of truth or dare. I saw the premonition that she saw, that of another girl strewn on a dirty old mattress. I awoke abruptly, and very upset. I wanted to know what happened next! Who was Trinity, and what did her vision mean? Why did she have it? What was the trigger? Had it happened before? And….what if it came true? What if, what if, what if….

 

As I answered those questions, the Midnight Dragonfly series was born.

 

I’d been writing suspense for years, but Trinity was my first Young Adult character, and she took me by complete surprise. However, I needn’t have worried. Characters have a way of taking over and telling their own stories and I quickly learned that strong characters are strong characters, regardless of age. There are, essentially, two kinds of people in this world: those who wait for life to happen, and those who make life happen.

 

The characters I most enjoy exploring, whether through writing or reading, tend to be the do-ers. They have:

 

1. Goals. This is one of the reasons a character like Katniss from the Hunger Games works so well. She has a concrete, well-defined goal that pulls her through the story. Initially she seeks to protect her sister. As the plot progresses, she seeks to survive. Goals give characters something to act upon. They put the character in the driver’s seat and allow them to move the story forward. They raise the stakes. Conversely, without goals, the story tends to happen to the character, as opposed to the character driving the story.

 

2. Courage. There are so many kinds of courage, the physical kind that comes from confronting danger, but also the emotional kind that comes from standing up for what you believe in and making tough choices. The strength it takes to confront something you know is wrong and the unbelievable bravery that can be required to walk away from a dysfunctional relationship. Characters with courage tend to step forward rather than shrink back. Courage makes your heart race, the adrenaline flow. Courage makes you wonder what happens next. And courage is what leads Trinity to risk her own life to discover the truth behind her visions, when it would have been so much easier to stay in her condo and pretend that when she closed her eyes, she saw nothing.

 

3. Hopes and dreams. It’s fabulous to be tough and brave and bold, but for a character to be real and three-dimensional, there’s got to be a softer, quieter side, as well. Hopes and dreams turn strangers into friends, and make their struggles more personal—and important.

 

4. Secret fear/Achilles heel. We all have them. Maybe it’s something simple, like a fear of spiders. Maybe it’s more complex, a fear of being left alone in the dark, which triggers traumatic memories. Sometimes it’s more emotional, the fear of being abandoned or not loved, not good enough. These are the traits that embody a character’s vulnerability and make people care what happens to them. Trinity was afraid of being an outcast. She was afraid of being rejected because she was different. At first this led her to try and hide the truth about her visions, but ultimately (because of #s 6 and 7) she realized her goal (to save her classmate) was more important than her fears.

 

Those four are all concrete. The next four are more behavioral related.

 

5. Say what’s on their mind. This is something I, personally, used to have a hard time with. I’d think something, but frequently bite my tongue. In my very first novel, my editor pointed out my character was doing this, too, and she encouraged me to let my heroine have her say. I did, and the most amazing thing happened: the intensity and energy level of the story soared. As my heroine began to speak up, those around her spoke up, giving way to meaty, emotional conversations. AND, I found myself speaking up, too. 

6. Make mistakes. Perfection is an awesome goal, but it’s not realistic. People make mistakes, and characters need to, as well. Maybe you believe your boyfriend the first time he tells you he’ll never lie to you again. That’s okay. That’s trust. But when he lies to you again, this time you don’t believe his pathetic claims to “be better in the future” and you show him the door. That’s growth.

 

7. It’s okay to be afraid. Sometimes we all are. It goes back to being human. But a strong YA heroine doesn’t let this fear hold her back. She doesn’t let it overtake her life. She faces the fear. She confronts it (hence the importance of bravery) and, ultimately, finds herself that much closer to her goal.

8. No negative self-talk. This is simply my own personal life mantra, which has found its way into my work. Life is hard, and we’re often our own toughest enemy. That’s all normal. But I’d rather not see a YA heroine thinking of herself as stupid or ugly or an idiot. She can be upset with herself—sometimes, we all are. But I prefer to steer clear of the negative self-talk, unless, of course, the journey from negative to positive is part of the story goal J

 

And then, finally, this one seems rather obvious, but it’s a biggie for me:

 

9. Name. I simply can’t get to know a character until I know her name. When I’m plotting a new story, I can’t get far without the “right” name. There’s just a big difference between Anne versus Phoebe, Courtenay versus Trinity. Each name has its own vibe, and until I find the right vibe, the character can’t fully gel.

 

I had such an amazing time exploring Trinity—What about you? What are your favorite character traits? Your least favorite?

Most people who know Ellie think she’s your nice, ordinary wife and mom of two young kids. They see someone who does all that normal stuff, like grocery shopping, walking the dogs, going to baseball games, and somehow always forgetting to get the house cleaned and laundry done.

What they don't know is that more often than not, this LSU J-School alum is somewhere far, far away, in an extraordinary world, deeply embroiled in solving a riddle or puzzle or crime, testing the limits of possibility, exploring the unexplained, and holding her breath while two people fall in love.

Regardless of which world Ellie’s in, she loves rain and wind and thunder and lightning; the first warm kiss of spring and the first cool whisper of fall; family, friends, and animals; dreams and happy endings; Lost and Fringe; Arcade Fire and Dave Matthews, and last but not least…warm gooey chocolate chip cookies.

 

You can follow Ellie on Facebook or on Twitter@EllieJamesMDB.  Find out more about her Midnight Dragonfly series on her website.

Guest post: Dreamless - Josephine Angelini

Today on the blog I have a fabulous guest post from the wonderful Josephine Angelini, author of 'Starcrossed' and the recently published 'Dreamless'.

Helen Hamilton Vs. Two of My Favorite Heroes!
The hero of my Starcrossed trilogy, Helen Hamilton, is a late bloomer. She starts off clueless, grows to be only semi-informed by the start of Dreamless, and barely manages to pull of some pretty nifty problem solving by the end of it. In the final book, Goddess, her hero-skills grow even more, but she still manages to make a ton of mistakes along the way. Helen may be a demigod, but she’s also extremely human. Those are the kind of characters I like—the ones that make mistakes, but keep going anyway. You know, the human ones.

Usually when someone asks me to reference my favorite books or characters I end up referencing stories that are about forty years old and that no teen has ever heard of. So this time around, I’m going to talk about characters that I know all of you know—Harry Potter, for starters.

Let’s face it. Harry isn’t the brightest bulb on the branch. Neither is Helen. Harry isn’t the best wizard. Helen has a ton of power and only a vague idea how to use it. In pretty much every situation that both Harry and Helen find themselves in, they need the help of their friends to get through it. But get through it they do, and to me that’s the most important part. They keep at it. They may not like the situations they find themselves in, but they never stop fighting. That’s a hero.

Another favorite hero (or heroine) of mine is Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. Like my misguided Helen, Elizabeth is another girl that gets it all wrong. She’s wrong about Mr. Darcy, she’s wrong about Mr. Bingley and her sister, and she’s totally wrong about Mr. Wickham. But despite misreading just about everyone in the cast of characters, our Lizzy B is willing to grow and change without changing who she is as person. Okay, so she’s wrong, like, a lot. By the end of the book she has to apologize for some of her mistakes, but even still, I never get the sense that she’s lost an ounce of her spirit. In fact, when she stands up to Mr. Darcy’s rich and over-bearing aunt, it seems that she’s only grown stronger because of the things she’s been through. That’s the way it’s done. That’s the way a hero does it.

We don’t love heroes because they are never wrong. We love them because they learn from their mistakes and grow stronger. We love that they aren’t perfect, but that they keep trying anyway. We love them because they are like us. 

Find out more about Josephine on her website and follow her on Twitter@josieangelini

Guest post: Josephine Angelini - Inspirational women

'Starcrossed' by Josephine Angelini is one of my favourite debuts of the year.  It's a divine mix of mythology, romance, mystery and action and is an addictive and compelling read.  It's sure to be a massive summer hit and there are already legions of fans waiting for the next magical installment.

If you haven't read it yet, then don't wait!  Go and pick up a copy now!

If you're a sucker for gorgeous cover art then take a look at these amazing covers for the book.  You will definitely want these prettying up your bookshelves.

'Starcrossed' features some amazing female characters.  There's the incredible Helen Hamilton, the main character of the novel, her best friend and resident badass Claire Aoki, as well as Cassandra and Ariadne, the beautiful and powerful members of the Delos family.  These women are all tough, feisty and independent individuals and stand out as being among some of the best female protagonists I've ever read about.  Josephine herself grew up with seven siblings, six of them sisters and I'm lucky enough to have her here today talking about the amazing women that have influenced her throughout her life.  

So, without further ado, over to Josephine! 

I have a lot of women in my life.  I always have.  I was born the youngest of eight siblings and there's only one boy nestled right in the middle of all of us.  For those of you who don't like to do math while reading (like me) I'll translate.  I have six big sisters, and I do mean big.  I'm 5'9" and I'm the littlest of the bunch. 

We Angelini girls are all tall, and since we're half Italian, we all have a ton of hair.  When you ask most people to list what homey smells bring them back to their youth they usually say things like cookies baking in the oven.  Not me.  My childhood smells like hairspray baking on a curling iron.

And it sounds like Led Zeppelin.  I was the only eight-year old I knew that could recite all the words to "Stairway to Heaven".  That's because my sisters raised me right.  In the morning when I would get up to pee, they would lock me out of the bathroom, turn off the tape recorder (this was the 80's) and make me sing the next line of whatever Led Zeppelin song they happened to be playing at the time in order to get in.  I learned fast.  

I've noticed that people comment a lot about my female characters, saying that I write strong women.  There's a very simple explanation for why I do this, one very near and dear to me.  My sisters would pummel the daylights out of me if I wrote a weak one.

Of course, now that we're all grown-ups and pretty much civilized, the pummeling isn't physical.  It's much, much worse.  It's "the look".  There's nothing like six girls, all raised ultra Catholic, to shame the pants off someone.  Get them all in the same room - giving "the look" together - and I'm pretty sure they could glare a perfectly healthy person to death.

I'm no dummy.  I know my sisters have a very good reason for forcing me to respect women on the whole.  it's because they want me to contribute to a world where women are valued as much as men.  They want me to dig a little deeper and question the way women in our society are treated and demand better for the future.  They love me with all their hearts, and they want me to respect myself as a woman. 

I write strong women because I love and respect the strong women in my life. 

I write strong women because my sisters raised me right.