Blog Tour: The Crash

Today we have a brilliant guest post from Lisa Drakeford, author of The Baby and The Crash. I adored both of her books, and they are so very different but gripping. Review of The Crash to come soon but right now, I'll hand it over to Lisa.

My Dream Movie Cast for The Crash

Ok, so I’m now the most powerful casting director in the world, because I can currently conjure up actors from any era. It’s a hard life, but somebody’s got to do it. I’m about to find actors who will play the five main characters in The Crash. Obviously they’re available!

Please mop my brow and feed me grapes as I make my decisions ...

Gemma: She’s snippy and prickly but gorgeous. She’s damaged and hard to love, but actually, strangely loving.

And the lucky actress is … Cara Delevingne from Paper Towns.

Tye: He’s strong, he’s funny and he’s a good best friend. He has a few secrets but he’s gradually dealing with them.

This time I’m going for Nathan Stewart Jarrett. He played the delightful Curtis in Misfits; perfect for the part.

Harry: Reliable but guilt ridden. Loyal and artistic. The best brother in the whole wide world and totally submersed in love.

A no-brainer here … Dylan Minnette, the actor who played Clay in Thirteen Reasons Why.

Sophie: A fab best friend but also riddled with guilt. She’s on a mission but gets somewhat distracted. Gets on with life despite some hard knocks.

I’m going for Katelyn Nacon who plays Enid in The Walking Dead. (Obviously she’ll have to change her accent.)

And finally, young Issy: The shyest, quietest member of the cast with the biggest, darkest secret. There’s a depth to Issy which nobody knows about. But eventually the truth has to come out and that’s when she finds her courage.

It’s obviously … Milly Bobby Brown – Eleven from Stranger Things, of course.

So, that was fun. Casting Direction could well be the dreamiest job ever. Is it too late to switch career?

Lisa Drakeford is the acclaimed author of The Baby, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. Her new novel, The Crash, is out now priced £7.99.

Blog Tour: Summer at Conwenna Cove by Darcie Boleyn

Eve has a glittering career, a loving husband and a future. But a terrible twist of fate means she loses it all, and with nowhere left to turn she flees to her Aunt Mary’s home in Cornwall. The last thing on her mind is romance – until she meets Jack.

Jack has seen the worst things people can do to each other and realised he is better off alone. He settles in Conwenna Cove, and saves his affections for the rescue dogs he cares for. But when Eve arrives in the village he can’t deny his attraction to her.

Eve and Jack are both scared to trust, but when they come together it’s impossible for either to ignore their feelings. Can they put their fears aside and learn to love again?

After Eve suffers a terribly and embarrassing anxiety attack at work, she takes herself away to her aunt’s for some well-deserved TLC. There, she is able to confront her demons and troubles, as well as get giddy for her aunt’s neighbour Jack. 

There was a slow build up with the romance, which was sweet and appropriate, as both of them were dealing with past baggage, but not always believable. I really wanted to root for them and for the most part I did, but there were a few little niggling moments when they were characteristically mushy or harsh. Still a very good portrayal of forgiving and looking after yourself before taking on another relationship.

There was also a pretty good representation of anxiety and grief – maybe kind of brushed over when convenient but still treated as a long term problem, not something that could just be fixed by a holiday and falling in love. 

This was not my usual book but quite liked it. There was a lot of telling rather than showing – even as Eve and Jack keep their secrets to themselves for a while, we get it narrated in their inner monologue anyway – which did quite annoy me but I got used to it. So, I had my issues but they were minor and weren’t enough to detract from a good love story about moving on and forgiveness.

Published 17th May 2017 by Canelo. Thank you to the publisher and Faye Rogers PR for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Guest Post: Moondust's Gemma Fowler

Fed up with reality? Create your own.

I have a very low tolerance of reality. I think it’s the reason I wanted to become a writer. It’s definitely the reason I chose to write sci-fi and fantasy stories. Why write about this familiar old world when you can escape into your very own?

World-building is my absolute favourite thing to do. I’m filled with glee at the prospect of building and crafting a detailed alternative society with its own quirks and traditions, and then setting about slowly destroying it. *evil laugh*

The world I built for Moondust is a reflection of our own: a future Earth that feels familiar and strange at the same time. I wanted to tackle issues that we might actually face one day – like the energy crisis – but I also wanted the United Earth to have an otherworldly quality, a style, for want of a better word.

Colour is a huge part of Moondust’s world. Lunar Inc’s ‘rainbow’ was one of the first things I had in my head. Before the story, before Aggie, I imagined a colossal lunar base covered in bright, bold, intimidating colours under an oppressive black sky. I used that feeling to test characters and scenes as I got down to writing. If a person or a setting wasn’t in keeping with Moondust’s rainbow feel, it (or they) didn’t make the cut.

Building a world is so much more than the words and scenes that make it into the final edit. You need to colour your world in other ways, give it its own history and culture. I didn’t realise this would lead to mood boards and maps and logos for things that readers will probably never encounter (well, maybe you don’t have to do the logos, but I did).

For example, I can tell you that Seb’s favourite band is called Sonic Nugget and they sound like kitchen utensils being thrown down a spiral staircase. The frozen custard brand that Aggie and Seb love so much is called Pluto’s, and they serve their desserts upside down to show how thick the mixture is (something I stole from a real frozen custard place called Ted Drewes in St Louis).

Keeping track of all these details can make your brain feel like it’s in a blender.  So I created my own ‘Lunarpedia’, documenting the history of the United Earth, of FALL, and of Lunar Inc. I’ve written the word count of Moondust over again just to fill in the blanks in a complex history of a world that only exists in my head. How awesome (and exhausting) is that?

The United Earth, Aggie and the Lunar Inc. base lived in my head until March 2^nd, when Moondust finally made it out into the world. Creating a world is good, but sharing it with readers is just amazing.

Mood board alert! You can check out my Moondust boards on Pinterest here:

https://uk.pinterest.com/gemf/united-earth/

Gemma Fowler is the author of Moondust, out now, priced £6.99.

Find out more about Moondust here or follow Gemma on Twitter.

Wing Jones Photo Blog Tour

Wing Jones is the much anticipated debut novel from Katherine Webber, publishing 5^th January 2017 in the UK. With a grandmother from China and another from Ghana, fifteen-year-old Wing is often caught between worlds. But when tragedy strikes, Wing discovers a talent for running she never knew she had. Wing's speed could bring her family everything it needs. It could also stop Wing getting the one thing she wants…

Katherine Webber was born in Southern California but has lived in Atlanta, Hawaii, Hong Kong and now in London. For several years she worked at the reading charity BookTrust, where she worked on projects such as The Letterbox Club which delivers parcels of books to children in care, and YALC, the Young Adult Literature Convention. You can find her on Twitter @kwebberwrites

Throughout January, over 40 bloggers will be participating in the #WJphototour – a photo blog tour documenting Katherine’s path to publishing her debut novel. From childhood memories that inspired her writing to her time living in Atlanta and Asia that influenced the book to authors she’s met over the years right up to receiving her first finished copy of the book, follow along to see Katherine’s author life unfold! Keep an eye on the hashtag to see the latest photos!

So here is my day's photo and caption, written by the lovely Katherine:

"As I grew into a teenager, I still was a huge bookworm and spent every second I could reading. My little sister, pictured next to me, was born when I was 13, and I used to spend hours telling her makeup stories. I knew I wanted to be a writer by this time, but I didn’t tell anyone. It seemed like an impossible dream."

Blog Tour: Girl Hearts Girl by Lucy Sutcliffe

An inspiring, uplifting and sympathetic story about sexuality and self-acceptance, Lucy Sutcliffe's debut memoir is a personal and moving coming out story. In 2010, at seventeen, Lucy Sutcliffe began an online friendship with Kaelyn, a young veterinary student from Michigan. Within months, they began a long distance relationship, finally meeting in the summer of 2011. Lucy's video montage of their first week spent together in Saint Kitts, which she posted to the couple's YouTube channel, was the first in a series of films documenting their long-distance relationship. Funny, tender and candid, the films attracted them a vast online following. Now, for the first time, Lucy's writing about the incredible personal journey she's been on; from never quite wanting the fairy-tale of Prince Charming to realising she was gay at the age of 14, through three years of self-denial to finally coming out to friends and family, to meeting her American girlfriend Kaelyn. 

Firstly, I don't watch Lucy's videos, and when I heard about this book, I didn't know who she was but I was interesting in her story; it's something different to what I usually read and of course very inspirational by the sound of it. And while I did have a few niggling issues, I really enjoyed it. I liked Lucy's whole background, from making friends to moving to a bigger secondary school, getting bullied, all of these experiences made Lucy who she is and proved that she is more than just her sexuality.

The book was purely chronological, which might not have been the best way of setting it out as an autobiography, as the first few chapters on childhood friends was a little boring, but I actually took it as a story. That way, the back story just built up to the main plot, learning and accepting her sexuality and meeting Kaelyn.

Like I said, I was reading like a story, almost fiction in the way its set out and that worked for me. However, I would have loved some more of modern-day Lucy, like how she and Kaelyn worked as a couple and some more mention of their YouTube channel. I can understand why Lucy would want to keep some aspects of their relationship private but just skating over the "getting to know you" part of their relationship felt like I was skipping a chapter! Having said that, I did enjoy how it wasn't just about them, there was an overarching message about the LGBT community and how it supports each other and how the girls contributed to it, that was very touching to hear about.

There is also a tour-wide giveaway to win one of 3 copies of this brilliant book! Click here to go to the rafflecopter page.

Published 24th June 2016 by Scholastic. Thank you to the publisher and Faye Rogers PR for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Blog Tour: Crush by Eve Ainsworth

Love hurts ... but should it hurt this much? Reeling from her mum's sudden departure, Anna finds the comfort she needs in her blossoming relationship with Will. He's handsome and loving, everything Anna has always dreamt of. He's also moody and unpredictable, pushing her away from her friends, her music. He wants her to be his and his alone. He wants her to be perfect. Anna's world is closing in. But threatening everything is a dark secret that not even Will can control... Eve Ainsworth's gripping second novel is a pitch-perfect exploration of love at its most powerful, addictive and destructive.

I have heard great things about Ainsworth's writing, how powerful it is, and honest. And while I really wanted to try it, I was a little nervous. I get probably way too invested in characters so when there's a story specifically on domestic abuse, it's going to hurt. And it did but it was so good, so very insightful and brutally honest, that I did really like it.

This was a toxic relationship, right from the start. It started off quite subtle, like the way he wanted her to style her hair, then got progressively worse, telling her what to eat, how to do her make-up, then grabbing her arm and her hair. As Will can't quite control his anger, it shows how abuse can start and snowball into something unrecognizable. Anna was twisted to Will's way of thinking, she didn't want to make him angry because he loved her, right?

With Will's little journal entries, we saw inside his head and sort of understood his reasoning; he had been abused by his older brother, and his mother was a wreck, his father absent, and he just wanted something he could control. It was still awful, of course, but somehow by trying to understand it, it made it a bit more bearable, as Will was a victim too. Not that that excuses his behavior, it just makes it more understandable. At least from my perspective.

All in all, a very tough story that dealt with abuse the best way it could, be laying it all out as something to be identified and talking about it openly.

Published 3rd March 2016 by Scholastic. Thank you to the publisher for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Blog Tour: Inferno by Catherine Doyle

Today I am delighted to host a guest post from none other than Catherine Doyle, author of Vendetta and Inferno, published by Chicken House. I absolutely love these books and cannot wait for the finale of the trilogy! Check out my review here of Inferno.

Examining bravery in YA: What makes a badass heroine?

In recent years, feminism in YA has been almost exclusively associated with heroines who wield a sword, exhibit impressive physical strength, or espouse typically masculine traits to reach her end goal. This singular notion of bravery coincides with the latest spate of YA novels and the booming success of dystopian novels. Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior are often lauded as being ‘badass’, but in placing them on pedestals, are we forgetting the other kinds of strength – intelligence, kindness, resilience – that can get overlooked for being quieter or less showy?

Feminism in YA is about more than brute strength, and bravery is about more than survival. A strong character is one who possesses noble qualities, and can fall anywhere on an entire spectrum.

There is strength in intelligence: In The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh teenager Shahrzad’s best friend has been put to death by order of the Caliph of Khorasan. Shahrzhad makes it her mission to avenge her, to infiltrate the palace and find out what has turned this ruler so callous in the treatment of his wives. To do this, she becomes a wife herself. Instead of matching his cruelty, she uses her talents as a storyteller to draw him under her spell. Her power here is gentle, careful, but effective. Her intelligence is her greatest weapon, and as it turns out, the most effective tool to gain the answers she needs and to set right a great wrong in the kingdom.

There is strength in vulnerability: Vulnerability is often considered a weakness, but there is bravery in daring to open your heart to someone else, and choosing to love instead of being afraid. Violet in All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven might be an unconventional ‘badass’, but there are few things more difficult than pushing through a dark cloud of grief, acknowledging the loss of her sister and her closest confidant, and choosing to live a full life for both of them. There is strength in choosing to love the perfectly imperfect Theodore Finch, in opening her heart and knowing that even though it might not last, it does not mean it won’t have been worthwhile.

There is strength in being different: Jo March in Little Women blazed her own trail. She is clever, bold and outspoken. She doesn’t allow the external pressures of society to change who she really is inside. Her ambition to write stories is the fire inside her, that makes her passionate, dedicated, and unafraid. It makes her different, and different is most certainly good.

In Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, Celaena Sardothien is strong and skilled. She is also unashamedly into boys – dating, kissing, flirting. She likes to wear beautiful dresses and make herself up. She is both a physical powerhouse and she is a teenager, complete with raging hormones and the occasional mood swing. Maas is determined to show that being interested in romance, among other things, does not make Celaena weak, nor does it stop her from being a feminist.

This year, I attended several panels on feminism in YA, where authors examined the idea of bravery in their characters, and discussed what they felt made their heroine strong. More than just physical displays of bravery, they spoke of the quieter ways in which their characters stood up for themselves and others, and how oftentimes, subtler noble characteristics make for a more impressive lead character.

There is more than one way to be strong; female badassery comes in many different forms.

How Do You Like Your Romance: Darkmere and Crow Mountain

Today we have a blog tour post celebrating one of Chicken House's recent and incredible publications, Darkmere by Helen Maslin. My review of Darkmere can be read here. And alongside, we are also highlighting another epic romance by Chicken House, Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis (review here). Take it away Helen and tell us who inspired you to write!

       Authors Who Inspire Me

by Helen Maslin

In the spring of 2012, I was browsing the blogs of my favourite writers and trying to convince myself it could happen to me too. The phone-call that would change everything. I’d sent my manuscript off to several agents and now I had to wait. I read the latest post on Laini Taylor’s blog – which is always crammed with writing tips and pretty pictures, and one of the links took me to Stephanie Perkins’ blog – which is funny and has photos of attractive men. After that I clicked on Sally Gardner’s website and realised...they all had brighter hair than me!

That weekend, I bought a gallon of Crazy Colour and spent hours making my hair redder than a can of Coca-Cola. And then scrubbing dye off the bath. And the shower. And the sink. And all the towels...sigh.

Because if I couldn’t be a published writer, I was damn well going to look like one!

Then of course, I got my phone-call. An agent invited me to meet her for a cup of coffee because she liked my writing. ‘It’s the hair,’ whispered a voice in my head. ‘The hair-thing worked!’

Later, I had a meeting with a publisher, who also told me he liked my writing. Definitely the writing. But I’ve never let my hair colour fade. You know...just in case.

Hair epiphanies aside, Laini Taylor is one of my favourite writers because her imagination seems to stretch so much further than anyone else’s. It’s limitless. And it makes me want to be braver too. One of her stories – Hatchling – is so startling that I genuinely couldn’t tell whether I liked it or not until I’d read it several times.

Similarly, the author who inspired me earliest – Daphne du Maurier – was also noted for her imagination. Throughout Rebecca, the unnamed heroine spends a great deal of time thinking about what might happen in the future or what might’ve happened in the past – entire conversations, dramatic scenes, years passing – everything. Du Maurier was imagining an imaginary character’s imaginings. I love that! Norman Collins (a senior editor at Gollancz) said, ‘I don't know another author who imagines so hard all the time.’

The same could be said of JK Rowling. I think the wizarding world of Harry Potter is more richly imagined than any other fictional setting. Schools, shops, spells, food, fairytales, animals – the details are fascinating and endless. I can’t read this series without wondering which house I’d be sorted into, or what my wand would be made of and so on. These are books that readers can climb inside and live in. 

While it’s imagination that inspires me most of all, I think it’s humour that makes me enjoy the writing process. Neil Gaiman’s stories read as if they were fun to write. In reality, they must have taken time and work, but they’re so full of mischief and subtle jokes and playful asides to the reader, they could’ve been written simply to amuse himself. Even his most dreadful villains are funny and whimsical and brilliantly entertaining – I love Croup and Vandemar, Prince Septimus and the Lilim, and the Jacks of All Trades.

My favourite books of all are the ones in which I can sense the writer’s desire to draw me into an imaginary world, to entertain me or make me laugh. Even when I’m too caught up in the story to know that I’m aware of anything beyond, it’s the author’s imagination and sense of humour that will prompt me to read their books over and over again.

Darkmere by Helen Maslin is out now, published by Chicken House

http://chickenhousebooks.com 

Blog Tour: Here Be Dragons

Today we have post number two in Sarah's epic blog tour as she explains her motivation and writing method for Here Be Dragons, first book in her new series about Welsh dragons. Check out my review here and then read on! Take it away Sarah!

Go to the bottom of Sarah’s blog to see competition details

The HERE BE DRAGONS Blog Tour – Post Two: The Inciting Incident

And huge thanks to Anya of An Awful Lot of Reading for hosting my second post!

Hello and Welcome back to my Blog Tour for HERE BE DRAGONS, Book One in my new trilogy: THE SNOWDONIA CHRONICLES!

Welcome to Sarah’s journey of discovery in which Sarah interviews herself about:

Why she decided to write HERE BE DRAGONS in the first place.
a) Where she got the inspiration from.
b) Her whole mountain obsession thing
c) What she did in the way of research, and
d) How she actually wrote the book etc etc !

So right now if you were climbing Everest you would now be at:

Icefall, 5500 m - 6100 m / 18000 ft - 20000 ft.

www.mounteverest notes:

‘This place is similar to a huge horror-chamber at an amusement park. Only this one is for real. There are countless scary things that can happen here.
A crevasse might open under you. An ice-pinnacle can fall on top of you. The entire area can collapse. It’s simply not a place for a picnic and most of us just concentrate on getting out of there as quickly as we possibly can.’

On my Blog Tour you are at the Inciting Incident. It is very like Icefall and not just because it begins with an “I”

You see I have structured my Blog Tour around the idea of how you actually structure a book! So Post One was about me finding The Hook, the background, the Set-up, the Buzz to get me through. But this post is about the Inciting Incident (The Three Act Structure…)

How does the Three Act Structure figure in this Sarah?

When I was first starting out as a writer, I thought I knew how to tell a great story. I thought I knew how to write it down too. I was totally sure I did - it must be just about as easy as buttering toast…

Wrong.

I realised my mistake as soon as I got started. I hit the Icefall hard. An ice pinnacle fell on my head and a crevasse opened up under my feet. Frankly, I had no idea about: tension, pace, voice, setting, structure, plot or character…

Need I go on?

Then I found a very helpful book on screen writing, which had a very easy to read diagram that looked exactly like a mountain. And I love mountains. So once I got hold of that shape and discovered The Three Act Structure, I was able then to put my ideas into some kind of shape too.

So I thought as mountain shapes are good for writing a book, they might also be good for writing a blog tour as well.

So ta-da! Here we go.

Okay, if the hook, the background was the mountains in Wales and trains and the mythology and the idea of dragons, then the Inciting Incident, of course, was actually starting out on my narrative, finding the exact right time and place to begin my story.

So where was that, then, Sarah?

Now as every writer knows, it's all very well to start a story at the start - with: ‘I woke up with a start.’ or “Wake up! Wake up! Its time to start getting up to go to school!” but we all know that that is not actually the best way to start a story.

According to age old wisdom – the very best way to start a story is, apparently, according to the Romans who obviously spoke in Latin is in medias res (in cool Roman-ish style writing) that means: in the middle of things. Not at the beginning like you’d think.

Well ‘In Medias Res’ is all very well – but in the middle of what? Obviously not in the middle of a boring conversation or in the middle of eating breakfast or in the middle of watching a soap opera, because those things don't start up or open a door or create a domino topple to get the story moving.

A good way to start the day, but not a story.

So I had to find somewhere to start ‘in the middle of things’ after/or before my hero, Ellie has seen the boy in the mist… that would be interesting and important enough to get the story moving (fingers crossed) and at the same time would hold my reader to the page, so they might want to know what might happen next.

Dragon in the mist – start here?

Or here?

Boy in the mist?

So I thought about putting some ideas into what I call my cauldron: my mental cooking pot. I put in the ideas of:

• Ellie
• the mountain
• and winter (to get the mist – obvs)
• mist
• and snow (because I wanted this opening scene to be very much a death/like a death– so that I could start a rebirth story/new love/new life and what better than to set is around the time of the death of the old year when there is snow?) So into the pot went
• near death
• the winter solstice
• Christmas
• New Year
• new beginnings
• dragons
• first love.

So with all these things, I started trying to think what might happen -  I needed something that would demand urgent action (plot is action – innit?) that might get the story going? (Of course, it would have to be a problem /something gone wrong, because as we all learn in nursery school that a story is a character plus a problem.)

So how did you solve that, Sarah?

Ah. Well into the pot I put: 

• a problem
• action
• how they might solve it so what went wrong could get worse
• in the middle of things
• up a mountain 
• a boy.

Then I had a jigsaw think. (Does that need explaining?)

And came up with - obviously, somebody could get lost, or they could be in danger on the mountain? Like mist=lost +snow=cold = freezing= death?

That seemed to me the most exciting and likely kind of opening ‘in Media Res’ that could happen on Snowdon.

Somebody is in danger, there on the mountain, lost in the snow, freezing to death.

Fabulous - that was really great because we know avalanches/mountain rescues etc do happen. So into the pot:

·         a mountain rescue

But who could be caught out in the snow? Ellie? The boy? Another?

Not Ellie, my main character, because she is a feisty girl of the mountains, so she's not going to be daft enough to be caught out needing to be rescued, is she?  Plus heroes don't need rescuing do they? So she has got to be part of the rescue team. She can go to do the rescue. *(That's great, except she is too young to be part of a proper search and rescue team – put on To Be Fixed later pile)

But excuse me, Sarah, who is she rescuing?

Don’t know.

And why would they be out on the mountain in the middle of winter all alone, so as to need rescuing?

Well that was my first challenge. If I knew that, if I could crack that, I would have a fantastic inciting incident to start my story off with. And I did crack it!

So here it is, the inciting incident, set in the prologue, a sneak preview of HERE BE DRAGONS.

Prepare yourself for a visit to Icefall.

‘The girl turns her face to the summit, above her the air shudders. Just thirty paces. If she can only reach the safety of the rocks. Heart pounding, blood hammering, she poises herself.

Run.

She races forward. She leaps from the ground, stumbles past the stony crags of the lair, bursts through the drifts of dark snow. The air shivers around her; she tears through it, swerves past the cliff edge above the llyn.

That dark fearful cliff edge.

An appalling shriek rents the air. The sound of teeth crashing, talons scraping. She imagines the yellow eyes searching for her. Soon they will know she’s gone. They will nose the air, catch her scent. Soon they will come for her.

Get to the rocks.

Steps crash behind her, mighty footfalls. She hears ragged breath at her back. A fetid stench slams into the dawn. They are coming.

Up ahead the rocky cave opens. Ten metres away. Ten metres of cliff edge. She weaves in between the clumps of snow-bound heather, ducking, leaping, twisting. The ground is icy, smooth, treacherous. She slips, rights herself. A booming, a shrieking tears at her ears.

They know she’s gone.

Just one chance now.

Just run

Just pray.

Just make it away from the old fortress of Dinas Emrys.

A deafening roar splits the dawn.

Hurry

She sprints. The path turns. She skids out of control. She’s falling. She screams; her arms outstretched. She hits the ground, tumbles forward.

“Help!” she cries weakly, “Oh somebody help me!”

And the earth beneath her feet gives way. Heart bursting, body falling, twisting, turning, down she plummets over the icy cliff edge.

Down into the gully beneath.’

Thank you so much for hosting my Blog Tour. See you all at Camp 1, Valley of Silence
6100 m - 6400 m / 20000 - 21000 ft. in Blog Post Three. Once there, we will look again at structure and see how I handle the First Turning Point in HERE BE DRAGONS.

XXX Sarah

To be in with a chance of winning a copy of Sarah’s book, answer this question: who is Ellie’s best friend? The answer can be found by following this link: https://www.v-publishing.co.uk/books/categories/fiction/here-be-dragons.html.

Email your answer to info@v-publishing.co.uk and one winner will be picked at random each week of Sarah’s blog tour.

Becoming Death by Melissa Brown

Ever since her father's demise, Madison Clark knew death had her number. After losing her first job, she is ushered into the cryptic family business. Little does she know her family is hiding a dark secret; they are grim reapers, custodians of souls on their journey to the beyond. Madison expects her historic legacy to have benefits beyond immortality. What she doesn't expect is to still be struggling for cash while reaping souls on the side.

As if being Death's minion wasn't strenuous enough, Madison finds herself back at school with her worst enemy studying the ancient rules, methods and paperwork of her vocation. In a cascade of life changes: her best friend admits he’s in love with her and she starts a new job as a professional mourner, but she can’t help thinking her family might have other secrets. 

Just when things are finally starting to feel normal again Death throws her a curveball: her next victim is her best friend. Madison must find a way to overcome the strict guidelines of being a grim reaper in order to save his life.

At 18, Madison really doesn't know where her life is going next but taking up the family business of taking souls was not what she expected! Understandably, she has trouble adjusting to her new job, it's violent and strange and terribly sad, but she's got to do it. Brown had a very odd way of setting it, with rules, classes, paperwork, hierarchy, just like a real business, even "Mr D" has an office! 

It was a very cool, if morbid, premise and for the most part it was handled pretty well. Not how I thought it was going to play out but good none the less. However, it could have been flushed out a lot more, and even only at 200-odd pages, some things were skipped over and I ended up a little lost. But it did have a good mix of creepy, sad and gruesome with funny, light and normal family drama. 

There is also a tour-wide giveaway! You could win a prettiful necklace as well as a copy of the book! Just click here to enter!

Published 12th June 2015. Thank you to the author for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Blog Tour: Killer Game by Kirsty McKay

KILLER GAME PLAYLIST by Kirsty McKay

Eerie. Thrilling. Confrontational. Uplifting. Soothing. 
Music is very important to me. That sentence is kind of like saying, ‘I have a great sense of humour.’ No one admits to not liking music, do they? As a teen, I was desperately secretive about what was on my Walkman. (Google it.) I liked to think I didn’t care what my peers thought of my taste, but really I was terrified that I’d be outed as a secret Scritti Politti fan when all the cool kids were listening to The Smiths. But, hey. One of the benefits of age is that you begin to genuinely not give a Shania Twain about what anyone else thinks. So with that in mind, here’s the run down on what was burning up my headphones while I was writing KILLER GAME.

Evanescence - Fallen
If there’s an album to listen to while reading KILLER GAME, this is it. Strung-out, gothic pop-angst. Searing vocals with a roar of orchestral, chaotic noise. For me this album evokes a feeling of isolation and an illusion of calm, while underneath uncontrollable, raw emotions crash against the shore. It’s quite beautiful, spooky, and also more than a little self-involved. It was the first piece of music that I thought of when preparing to write KILLER GAME and a perfect album to get me in the mood to inhabit Cate’s world. I even give it a shout-out in one of the first scenes set in the caves. Bring Me to Life is the most well-known track here, but my favourite is probably the gloomy but addictive My Immortal.
(Same kind of vibe … Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas)

Bjork - Hyperballad
Oh, Bjork, never change. I’ve loved this one for ages, but it came back to me while I was writing this book. An ear-worm of a song, and quite a story. The singer goes to a cliff every morning and throws a bunch of random stuff off the edge to the rocks below, in order to make peace with herself and get through the day. Destructive de-cluttering to get rid of emotional baggage. That’s a brave thought for a hoarder like me. Recklessness for a purpose, and a touch of silly. Also, cliffs. We like cliffs. Lots of cliffs in KILLER GAME.

The Doors - Riders on the Storm
Another song that ‘appears’ in the book. It’s a classic, of course, a cliché, really – but Jim Morrison remains an iconic figure of mystery to teens across the globe. This is ennui and 3am haze in a trippy 7 minutes. And check out the sound of those waves on the shore. You could just be on the island of Skola where KILLER GAME is set.
(See also Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album)

Tori Amos – Under the Pink 
This album has a little pain and a little bit of kooky and a whole heap of atmospheric, winding piano underscoring Tori Amos’ beautiful voice. It’s thrilling and wintery and isolated, full of foreboding and yearning and a touch of sardonic humour. It’s very KILLER GAME.
(Like this? Try Kate Bush’s Aerial.)


Macklemore and Ryan Lewis - Can’t Hold Us
There’s a vitality to this song that I love, a very masculine kind of energy, it’s ambitious and inspirational, earthy, hot. ‘Like the ceiling can’t hold us.’ Says it all really. This is the kind of invincibility the players in the Assassin’s Guild feel. ‘… like a Great White Shark on Shark Week.’ This song says, we’re going to be tested, but bring it on. Gotta love a brass section, too.
(And in the same mood … AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. Kanye pre Kim.)

210 Nature Sounds – 20 Hours of Relaxing Natural Ambiences for Meditation or Sleep 
… or writing KILLER GAME. For the bulk of the first draft of writing KILLER GAME, I couldn’t listen to anything with lyrics because it pulled me away from the story. Distracting! And then, suddenly, I couldn’t even face music. All I was able to listen to was hour after hour of natural sounds – specifically storms, waves on the rocks, vicious rainstorms and crying seabirds. This was the soundtrack of the island of Skola, the world I was creating. I felt the sting of salt on my lips, the assault of wind on my face, then the gentle lapping of calm seas on the sand … (OK, at times I felt like I was in a spa, and the endless rain noise made me want to pee.) But blimey, for the most part, was it ever atmospheric.
(Also check out … thunderstorms, your nearest ocean, rainforests, etc. Or go to a yoga class or a beauty parlor and you can guarantee there’ll be a bit of this going on in the background. Natural sounds are great, but please note, I draw the line at whale song.)

Searched through my playlist and not found a KILLER song yet? Try these. Also in the mix while I was writing KILLER GAME: London Grammar, Daft Punk, Elbow, Afro Celt Sound System, Lindsey Buckingham, Eric Church, Gustavo Santaolalla, Timbaland and Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Eclectic taste, I tell ya.
Now buy the book to match the tunes! KILLER GAME is out now and available in all the usual places online, the high street, and in your local, friendly indie bookstore.
Thanks for having me!

Follow Kirsty on Twitter @kirkybean and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kirstymckaywriter

Check out my review of Killer Game here - hint: it was amazing!

Blog Tour: Ravinder Randhawa guest post

Today I have the pleasure of opening Ravi's blog tour for her books Beauty and the Beast and Dynamite. Below we have a guest post from the author herself and a giveaway, which you can enter here!

Why I have British-Asian Protagonists
My main protagonist is always a British-Asian woman, no matter what the story-line may be. However, characters from all kinds of backgrounds populate my novels too, but the leading character is always British-Asian and female. 

 In the beginning it was a way of exploring my own existence as a British-Asian woman: externalising experience, history, and ideas through the fictional form. A novel is often a way of answering and re-ordering the world, of saying, ‘actually the reality is a little different to what you imagine, and we don’t like the clothes you’re putting us into therefore we’re going to do this... .’ The ‘this’ can be anything from a character initiating a masquerade, as the heroine of my first novel A Wicked Old Woman does, to a character saying, ‘you may be right, but I’m going to turn things upside down and sideways around and give MY take on the potpourri of life’, as Hari-jan does in Beauty and the Beast, the YA novel.  

Although I don’t write ‘experiential’ novels, i.e. novels that are derived largely from the writer’s life experience, I do feel it to be more truthful to me as a writer to make the main protagonist British-Asian, because that’s the lens through which I see the world. Not Indian, not English, but this strange hybrid that’s evolved in England; which is a little bit of India, a little bit of England and a little bit of something new. I suppose I could call it my sensibility, consciousness, perception…

I feel this double-faceted lens, gives a richer, broader, more imaginative view of the world. Instinctively therefore, I know there’s a greater complexity to life, a diversity of ideas and perspectives, which may contradict each other, or stand oddly next to each other, but which encourage tolerance, thoughtfulness and the development of knowledge. Like a tapestry woven from different patterns. 

In addition, it’s as if my main protagonist, because she’s British-Asian and female, is my partner. We launch ourselves into a story (onto a sea as it were) and we don’t know exactly where we’re going, what unknown perils or problems are going to come up and  threaten to derail us, or what’s going to happen at the end, but somehow, we get there together. 
The red-hot alarm, the danger is that the writer must not confuse herself with the protagonist. This is a challenge all writers face. It’s the point where writing becomes as much craft as creativity, ensuring that the characters, whoever they are, belong entirely to themselves and sustain their own existence on the page. With their own logic, contradictions, conflicts, weaknesses, ambitions, ambiguities or whatever comes from the theme. And this takes a lot of work. For me, developing the characters (whether British-Asian or not) goes hand in hand with developing the story. It doesn’t happen in one go, but through revisions, changes and edits. Well, they do say, character is story and story is character. 

 A novel is a conversation between the writer and the reader conducted through the fictional character. Each brings their own knowledge, experience, curiosity or expectations to it. I believe that fiction presents truths, and therefore fiction, whether as books, poems or songs, is as necessary to life as the clothes we wear. Stories have been told since time immemorial, whether around village fires, medieval halls or through YouTube shorts. Because of the importance of story, fiction, truth, perhaps intuitively I start from a central point in my consciousness, and then develop character and story as far as they can imaginatively travel. 

Actually, most writers do exactly the same! Most white male writers, have white male protagonists, most black women writers have black women protagonists and so on. I believe that stories should stand on their own, irrespective of who or what the writer is, but the consciousness composing the story, inevitably filters through. 

My protagonists are British-Asian females, but the stories in which they star can be adventures, dreams, sci-fi, social issues, or the turmoil of love and heartbreak. 

Ravinder Randhawa     14th May 2015.