Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Against All Odds Blog Tour--Giveaway and Guest Post

2:51 PM | Posted by Alexis Ladig

Today on the blog I'm happy to say that I'm a stop on the Against All Odds Blog Tour! I was instantly interested when I heard about the book (maybe partly because the main character and me share the same name.) Stay tuned a giveaway and guest post!

About the Author And Book:

Aliaa El-Nashar is a 21 year old girl studying languages at university. Grew up in Kuwait and is currently residing in Cairo, Egypt. Loves to read, write and draw.

"The Story revolves around:

-A boy called Damien who seems to have it all. He's rich, good-looking and athletic. He's also arrogant, obnoxious and a major player. Damien is one of 5 children who seem to not get along, until one day Damien meets Alexis and his life is turned inside out.

-A girl called Alexis who has trust issues due to her parents. Her best friends mean the world to her, and she refuses to date anyone that doesn't fit completely in her 'Perfect Guy' list.

They're thrown together a lot and start to face inner demons they've hidden away for so long."

Check out HERE for the Goodreads link.

Guest Post:

"Hello guys! I get asked a lot what made me write ‘Against All Odds’ by friends. The story is quite complicated, to be honest I never intended it as an actual book. After spending the summer of tenth grade reading every Meg Cabot my friend owned, as well as complete the ‘Harry Potter’ series she had owned at the time – not all 7 were out obviously – I had developed a craving towards writing. I used to write before, a lot actually, to the extent I had 5 ongoing stories on Quizilla. But I never completed any of them due to the fact that I have the attention span of a goldfish. However, that didn’t mean my style wasn’t improving, and I reached a level where my friends were actually interested in reading what I come up with.

My English class teacher was the best. No really, he was. He’d give us around 8 or so assignments per term and sometimes I hand in one or two. I almost never did my homework for that class because I believed creativity can’t be forced. If I wrote it because I had to, it was so mundane and dull so I refrained till I was inspired. It helped that the English teacher didn’t mind, just as long as two or more essays were submitted per term, so I was good. He’d wanted a descriptive essay, and one day – almost a month after he’d given us the assignment – I was inspired. I had the perfect plot, this girl staring into a fog of sand thinking her friend was lost to her for good. I then described her feelings, the atmosphere, her physical appearance and wrote a minor description to what led her to that point where she’s staring at said friend who nearly fell off a cliff.

As I was reading the essay before going into class, a friend of mine decided to read it as well, and for some reason she really liked it. She begged me to write more and so I decided to work on it. I gave the characters names and background stories as I thought of the plot that led to the cliff incident and how things turned after that.

I started writing non-stop, but most of my new entries were on my hard drive ‘Buffalo’ and as I was nearing the end, Buffalo died a tragic death. Meaning, all my updates were lost. I felt so upset for a while that I stopped writing altogether. I think it was the end of eleventh grade where I found my old notebook and decided to give writing it another shot, but as I started to reread the first few chapters I didn’t like where it was going, so I started fresh, cancelled out some characters and added others. New background stories were made, though the plot was the same, I just changed how they got there. In the middle of math class – and many other classes really, I wasn’t that fond of school - I would sneak the notebook under that table and start writing, where another friend saw me and decided to read what I was writing. She got interested and nagged me incessantly for new chapters, before I knew it, a few months later and voilà! The book was done!

~Aliaa"

And that's it for the guest post. Now for the giveaway! As part of the blog tour, Aliaa is helping me by giving away two ebook copies of her book! This is an INTERNATIONAL giveaway for two copies of Against All Odds. Check out the Rafflecopter below to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Labels: 2012, Against All Odds, Aliaa El-Nashar, Giveaways, Guest Post, June | 0 comments

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Secrets of the Vanmars-- A Guest Post

10:19 AM | Posted by Alexis Ladig

Hey guys! Today I'm lucky enough to host a stop on the blog tour for the new YA release of The Secrets of the Vanmars by Elisabeth Wheatley.

About the Author:

Elisabeth Wheatley started writing short stories when she was as young as seven years old. She began working on what would eventually become The Key of Amatahns when she was eleven. The story went through countless total rewrites until Elisabeth began working on what would be the final version when she was fourteen. When she completed the draft at fifteen, her parents (being supportive) sent her manuscript to a professional editor in West Texas. The editor, Suzanne O'Bryan, was so impressed with Elisabeth's work that she recommended it to a friend at a small publishing house, Chengalera Press. Chengalera Press was also very impressed and wanted to publish the manuscript. The Key of Amatahns was reviewed and edited by Professor Emeritus of the English Department at Southwestern University, Dr. T. Walt Herbert. The Kindle version of The Key of Amatahns was released on June 30, 2011, when Elisabeth was still fifteen. The paper version followed days later. Elisabeth is currently working on the second and third installments in the Argetallam Saga, while continuing to attend high school in the Texas Hill Country. Her hobbies include beekeeping, cheesemaking, mythology, and studying American Sign Language.

And now a post from the author herself about the writing process!

Elisabeth Wheatley--

How did you get the idea for The Secrets of the Vanamrs?

Excellent question. When I was working on the idea for my first book, The Key of Amatahns, I was already thinking ahead to the rest of the series.

At first, I created an imaginary world. I sort of had the intention of writing a story to go with it, but the story as well as the world experienced many, many total transformations before anything even remotely recognizable as the Argetallam Saga was created.

After I had been tinkering with the construction of my world for awhile, I decided that I would make my main character invulnerable to magic. Why? Because magic freaked me out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love books with sorcery and magic in them. But I am a big fan of the now cancelled TV series The Legend of the Seeker and the whole thing with the Confessors was scary. With one touch a Confessor could make you her devoted slave for life. Not cool.

Hence, my main character’s invulnerability to magic was envisioned. But having her be completely devoid of enchantment wasn’t fun either, so I gave Janir some of her own powers and magical abilities.

By the time I finished my first book, I had a very general, murky idea of what I wanted the future books in the series to be about. My original idea for the second book (it had no name at this point) involved a siege and large battles. While that might sound intriguing, when I went to write it, it came out all wrong and I decided to rethink the plotline.

I then wrote a completely different draft. It was nearly 300 pages long and it was total rubbish. The plotline wandered and there was no real point to the story. Fortunately, the worst scene in the book, (in my opinion, the worst scene I’ve ever written, in fact) didn’t make it past my brother, who came at me reading the scene out loud at the top of his lungs. A lot of my characters ended up looking silly in that second draft. (To my characters: sorry about that, guys!)

Over Christmas break, I barricaded myself in my room with tea and granola bars and set to work re-rewriting the book that I had now christened “The Secrets of the Vanmars.” My goal with my edits was to make the story more streamlined so that it wouldn’t drag, have a more focused and suspenseful plot, show character development, introduce a few characters I’d been dying to write in, and lastly, set up the scene for book 3.

Over three weeks I typed away in my room, until I emerged with a 261 page manuscript I prayed was better. Everyone who read my early drafts seems to think so and that’s a relief. But being a neurotic, insecure writer, I still have doubts.

About the Books:

Book 1: The Key of the Amathans

Book 2: The Secrets of the Vanmars

After her adventures with the Key of Amatahns, sixteen-year-old Janir Caersynn Argetallam returns home to find Brevia on the brink of war with a neighboring country, Stlaven. Her foster-father and even Saoven—a brave young elf warrior—think it will be safe at the castle where Janir grew up. However, while trying to unravel a looming mystery, Karile—self-taught wizard and Janir’s self-appointed best friend—becomes certain that there is danger in the mountains surrounding Janir’s childhood home and that it has something to do with Stlaven’s most powerful family, the Vanmars…

Thanks so much to Elizabeth for stopping by! If you want to know more about her or the books she writes, head to http://www.argetallam.com ! Feel free to comment on this post about if you've heard of this series, or what you think of teenage writing in general.

Labels: 2012, Elisabeth Wheatley, Guest Post, June, The Secrets of the Vanmars | 0 comments

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Pulse Experience: A Guest Post from Jeff Horton

6:54 PM | Posted by Alexis Ladig

I want to apologize in advance about the tardiness relating to this post. (I should have posted it last night or early this morning. I'm in the process of moving and my computer could not be set up and ready to use until now.)

THE PULSE EXPERIENCE -October 9-22, 2011.
An October Book Blog Tour for THE DARK AGE, arranged by The Experience Tours!

October

9 http://www.beautybrite.com/ http://www.beeskneesreviews.blogspot.com/
10 http://www.lettersinsideout.net/
11 http://coreenamcburnie.blogspot.com/
12 http://www.madmoosemama.blogspot.com/
13 http://www.thefairytalenerd.com/
14 http://ellsey.blogspot.com/
15 http://afterthebook.blogspot.com/
16 http://yabooksbeyondthecover.blogspot.com/
17 http://darkfrannysthoughts.blogspot.com/?zx=cd8439c4581e055e
18 http://www.books-ahoy.blogspot.com/
19 http://www.book-spark.blogspot.com/
20 http://imabookshark.blogspot.com/
21 http://supagurlbooks.blogspot.com/
22 http://www.reviewsbymolly.com/

5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting blend of science fiction and fantasy, recommended reading, September 10, 2011 By

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark Age: Survivors of the Pulse (Volume 2) (Paperback)

"As the world falls to pieces, evil will flourish and only the bold will dare stand in its way. "The Dark Age: Survivors of the Pulse" is set on a post apocalyptic Earth. Ferrell Young of the Warrior Clan takes up a duty for the church to recover an important book. He races against Barbaric warlord Kraken, who is looking to end any power to oppose him as lord of the world. "The Dark Age" is a riveting blend of science fiction and fantasy, recommended reading."

Guest Post

Please permit me to begin by saying thank-you for allowing me to be a guest author on YA Books: Beyond the Cover, and for giving me an opportunity to discuss my novel, THE DARK AGE!

During the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, apocalyptic stories became increasingly popular, particularly at the box office. Movies like Armageddon, Deep Impact, and 2012, just to name a few, have captured and held our imagination.

Have you watched, as I have, the many post-apocalyptic movies that have come out of Hollywood over the past several decades? During the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, apocalyptic stories became increasingly popular, particularly at the box office. Movies like Mad Max, The Day After, Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact, and 2012, just to name a few, have captured and held our imagination. I know that I've always been fascinated by apocalyptic thrillers, and I suppose many other people have as well. Apocalyptic stories in which the world is threatened and the unlikely hero finds himself in the right place at the right time to make a difference, and post-apocalyptic thrillers in which the protagonist is in a position to change the world for the better, have always inspired me, and helped me to realize how so very small many of my everyday concerns in life really are.

There have been a number of programs on television over the last few years, which examine possible outcomes should a specific global, catastrophic event occur, and how humanity might recover. There have also been experiments where people attempt to live as prehistoric man did, without the benefit of modern conveniences. While it certainly would be difficult to thrive or even survive under such conditions, one of the experiments I saw offered hope that humanity would be able to survive.

I didn't necessarily set out to write a post-apocalyptic thriller when I started writing The Dark Age, but it soon turned into one. As I did research for my first novel, The Great Collapse, and my second novel, The Dark Age, I was astonished to learn how vulnerable our national infrastructure and our civilization itself are to powerful electromagnetic pulses and solar flares. In 2008 a report requested by Congress and was completed by the EMP Commission. It confirmed that the threat of a single nuclear warhead detonated high in the atmosphere somewhere around Kansas was real, and that it could potentially take out the United States' national power grid.

In The Great Collapse, it is an EMP attack and a solar flare knock out power worldwide, causing civilization to collapse within months. Unlike an EMP generated by a nuclear detonation, however, the EMP attack and the solar flare renders it impossible for anyone anywhere on the planet to rebuild the technology so vital to our society. With most of humanity no longer possessing the know-how to safely live off of the land, it is a struggle just to survive. Now fast forward five-hundred years and you'll find yourself in The Dark Age, which is set in a world where humanity survives by the sword, the bow, and the arrow, while secretly hoping that a legend about the Great Oracle is true and that civilization will one day return to the Earth. The Dark Age is a story about self-discovery, perseverance, and self-sacrifice, all in an effort to save the world from a fate worse than death.

Hopefully, you will find as I did that The Dark Age paints a stark, yet intriguing and hopeful vision of the future, where heroes must work together in order to offer mankind a brighter tomorrow.

Find Jeff Horton on the internet:

Website at http://www.hortonlibrary.com.
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeff.Horton,
Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/Jeff_Horton
Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4478744.Jeff_W_Horton!

Buy his books at amazon.com:
The Dark Age (Survivors of the Pulse)

Labels: 2011, Guest Post, Jeff Horton, October, The Dark Age, The Experience, YA | 1 comments

Against All Odds Blog Tour--Giveaway and Guest Post

And that's it for the guest post. Now for the giveaway! As part of the blog tour, Aliaa is helping me by giving away two ebook copies of her book! This is an INTERNATIONAL giveaway for two copies of Against All Odds. Check out the Rafflecopter below to enter!