Kelly Hashway's Blog, page 102

Meet Lisa Basso

Today I have Lissa Basso, author of the YA novel A Shimmer of Angels with me!


Sixteen-year-old Rayna sees angels, and has the medication and weekly therapy sessions to prove it. Now, in remission, Rayna starts fresh at a new school, lands a new job, and desperately tries for normalcy. She ignores signs that she may be slipping into the world she has tried so hard to climb out of. But these days, it’s more than just hallucinations that keep Rayna up at night. Students are dying, and she may be the only one who can stop it. Can she keep her job, her sanity, and her friends from dying at the hands of angels she can't admit to seeing?


Welcome, Lisa! I’m happy to have you here today to talk about your recent release, A Shimmer of Angels, which I loved!
Thanks so much for having me! *does virtual back flips for the crowd*

I’m a big fan of angel books, but I can imagine you had to do a lot of research. Can you tell us a little about the research you had to do for this book?

Should I begin at the beginning? *snort* Okay. First I started with a little angel research: names, legends, myths, bible verses, anything angel-related I could pull out of the library and internets (yes, internets). As you can imagine, this took a lot of time to sift through. After that was done, I turned my attention to my main character, Rayna, and her past, mainly doing research on mental health facilities, psychology, and current mental health laws. All the time I put into the research phase was well worth it when I started writing. But no matter how thorough your research, there's always something else that comes up. :)
Rayna has a gift but it’s mistaken for an illness at first, and wow does it enhance the story line. How did you come up with the idea to have her family think she’s mentally ill?

I knew Ray was going to be the only one on Earth able to see the angels. Since her world is grounded in the real world, I thought about how a real family would handle that. They'd be concerned at first, and when Ray's actions became more erratic and she started coming unhinged, her dad would have no choice but to have her checked out by a doctor and put her in therapy. The ideas grew from there.
You have two angels in this book who get Rayna’s attention. I couldn’t decide who I liked more, Cam or Kade. Did you want your reader to have just as hard a time choosing between them as Rayna? How did you go about accomplishing this?

I so did. When I first got to know Cam and Kade (during the character interviews) I fell (pun intended). Hard. I loved them both so much. And when I put Rayna into scenes with both of them, I noticed how much she took her own shine to each boy. I've read a lot of YA books with love triangles. Most of the time you can guess exactly who the main character is going to choose. I love mystery, so I wanted to keep the reader guessing. To do that, I introduced Cam and Kade in ways that showed peeks into both their good and not-so-gravy sides. I wanted the reader to get to know both of them before Ray's decision swayed them in either direction. I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing "Team Cam" and "Team Kade".
Okay, well I'm Team Both because I love them both!

Just for fun:Angel or fallen angel? Hmmm. Probably Fallen angel. ;)
Describe A Shimmer of Angels in three words: Mystery. Psychology. Angels.
If you had wings for a day, what would you do? I would fly. Normally I hate flying (in planes), but if I'm in charge and I know how to work those suckers, I'm taking my new wings out for as many spins as I can manage before they disappear. Or I pass out from exhaustion.

Thanks for being here today, Lisa.

This has been great! Thank you again so much for having me, Kelly!

That's not all. You can enter to win a copy of A Shimmer of Angels, a messenger bag, stainless water bottle, journal, keychain, and postcard pack. This is open to US and Canada only. Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck.
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Monday Mishmash 2/11/13

Happy Monday! Here's my mishmash of thoughts:
Good News!  Face of Death, the third and final installment in the Touch of Death trilogy is under contract with Spencer Hill Press. The deal was announced in Publisher's Marketplace last week: "Kelly Hashway's FACE OF DEATH, the final book in the Touch of Death trilogy, to Trisha Woolridge at Spencer Hill Press, in a nice deal, by Lauren Hammond at ADA Management Group."Being sick is awful: My daughter and I have been sick for a long time now, and I'm so done with it all.Working at my daughter's school:  I'll be helping out at my daughter's school Wednesday and Thursday with Valentine's Day sales and group photos. I love getting to see her with all her friends.Sweets Blogfest: To celebrate the release of our sweet love stories, my friend Beth Fred and I are hosting The Sweets Blogfest on March 6! And we'd love it if you'd participate. You can sign up in the linky below.
Here are the rules:  Link to both Beth & Kelly.Post the image above.Optional: Tell us about your favorite sweet, your favorite memory involving a sweet, or your favorite sweet love story.You don't have to, but we'd love it if you could post covers for Advantage Heartbreak & The Other Marlowe Girl, in your post.
You'll also get a chance to win e-books of Love All & The Other Marlowe Girl. The rafflecopter for the contest will be available March 6, 2013 in our Sweets post and will remain available until 12 am on the 10th. We will announce winners the following Monday.
Sign up here:



If you sign up and would like to include the rafflecopter giveaway on your blog, email me at khashway(at)hotmail(dot)com for the html code. You do not need to include the giveaway in your post. That's optional.

That's it for me. What's on your mind today?

The Obvious Game by Rita Arens (Review)

Synopsis:
“Everyone trusted me back then. Good old, dependable Diana. Which is why most people didn’t notice at first.”

"Your shirt is yellow."
"Your eyes are blue."
"You have to stop running away from your problems."
"You're too skinny."

Fifteen-year-old Diana Keller accidentally begins teaching The Obvious Game to new kid Jesse on his sixteenth birthday. As their relationship deepens, Diana avoids Jesse's past with her own secrets -- which she'll protect at any cost.

My thoughts:
Wow. This is such a powerful story. Diana is fifteen, and she hates herself. She thinks she's fat and unworthy of love, unworthy of happiness. Then she meets Jesse. She falls for him hard and while he trains for wrestling, she starts a diet that turns her into a skeleton. She's sick. But she doesn't want to stop because her weight is the only thing she feels she can control in her life. Her mother has cancer and her treatments are sending her on a roller coaster ride that Diana is afraid will lead to her death. 

Diana's thoughts about herself are scary. They ripped at my heart. I cried for her. I cried for her mother. The pain Diana feels comes right through the pages, and I wanted nothing more than to get her help. She became that real to me. I've known people with eating disorders. I've known people who've watched loved ones suffer from cancer. The two are so powerfully woven together in this story.

This is one of those stories that every teen girl should read. It's a warning because it's so real. 

Just for fun:
It seems odd to have a "Just for fun" section for a book like this, but the story is called The Obvious Game because Diana loves to play a game where all you do is state the obvious. I'm going to start.  

Books are powerful.

Now it's your turn.

Interview with Andy Gavin, Author of Untimed

Today, I have Andy Gavin with me. His YA novel Untimed recently released through Tribute Books. You can find my review over on YA Bound.

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, even his own mother can’t remember his name. And girls? The invisible man gets more dates.

As if that weren’t enough, when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously.

Still, this isn’t all bad. In fact, there’s this girl, another time traveler, who not only remembers his name, but might even like him! Unfortunately, Yvaine carries more than her share of baggage: like a baby boy and at least two ex-boyfriends! One’s famous, the other’s murderous, and Charlie doesn’t know who is the bigger problem.

When one kills the other — and the other is nineteen year-old Ben Franklin — things get really crazy. Can their relationship survive? Can the future? Charlie and Yvaine are time travelers, they can fix this — theoretically — but the rules are complicated and the stakes are history as we know it.

And there's one more wrinkle: he can only travel into the past, and she can only travel into the future!






Hi, Andy! Thanks for dropping by to talk a little about Untimed.
What made you choose to have part of your book take place in 1725 London?
I love history and at first I thought about going to the ancient world, which is my real passion, but I wanted to avoid over-indulging myself and for this first outing stay with a time, place, and celebrity that wasn’t so alien. If I was going back that far, I’d want to capture the monumental shifts in mindset, and it was too much for the first in the series.Somehow, I always imagined Charlie in Philadelphia, and that led me quickly to Ben Franklin, who is a favorite of mine. In an alternate dimension there exists a simpler Untimed, woven between modern and 18th century Philly. No London. No France. No China. That book would have been more like a Hollywood story, all packaged up neat and clean, but neat and clean isn’t the Andy Gavin style.

If you had to compare Charlie to a well-known historical figure, who would it be?

Hmmm. That’s a stumper. Charlie’s his own man. I tried to make him very likeable and funny but with an authentic fifteen year-old voice, which means it has a bit of an edge. Teen boys think about shit and sex. Sorry, but it’s true. I rub up on issues that make some squirm, even if I deal with the lightly: teen pregnancy, drinking, slavery, etc. But to sweep these under the carpet wouldn’t do justice to the 18th century – or our own.
What was the best part about researching for this story?

Reading about the London underworld of the 1720s. I tore through perhaps 10 books on the topic (not to mention several Ben Franklin biographies, etc.) but the best was this out of print little book called The Road to Tyburn which vividly painted the sordid reality. After reading that, I knew I had to delve into the seedy side. Also great fun was combing through the two cant dictionaries I found, one from the 1737 and the other published in 1811. The number of hilarious sexual slang words is uncountable and it was a blast to disguise the nasty bits of Yvaine’s and Donnie’s dialogue with obscure cant.

If you could travel to any time, what would it be?

Personally, I’d love to visit the ancient world, mostly the great cities. Rome in different eras (Republican, Imperial, etc.). Egypt during the peak of the New Kingdom. Pericles’ Athens. Justinian’s Constantinople. Alexander in Babylon. All good stuff. We can bet that Charlie will be heading downtime sometime in the future… uh, his meta-future that is.

Just for fun:Past or present? Past.
Favorite food: Spicettes, the funny flavored gumdrops. And I’m a consummate foodie!
What song best fits this book? I’m not sure, but while writing it I listened a hell of a lot to the Daft Punk Tron Legacyalbum. It seems to fit.

Thanks, Gavin!

If you want to check out Gavin's book, you can find it in paperback or on Kindle. And here's a giveaway as part of the blog tour:
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So, what do you think of the book?

Monday Mishmash 2/4/13

Happy Monday! Here's my mishmash of thoughts:
Love All is only $1.99!  In honor of Valentine's Day, my publisher Swoon Romance lowered the price of Love All to $1.99. Grab your copy here before the price goes back up.Advantage: Heartbreak and Perfect Match  Novellas two and three in the Game. Set. Match. Heartbreak series have been pushed back to May 7 and October 15. I'm relieved. Spacing them out will make them much easier for me to promote. I've extended the time on the Team Ash or Team Noah poll in my sidebar to span the entire series. Don't forget to cast your vote. :)Touch of Death FB Quiz  The quiz is up and running! Now you can see how well you know Jodi and the other Ophi in Touch of Death. I've seen some of you have already taken it and posted your results on FB. Thank you! I hope you found it fun.Plotting a New Novel  I've been researching for a new book and playing around with Scrivener to help me plot it. So much fun!Into the Fire Cover Reveal  Month9Books made a video to reveal the covers of their new books and showcase those coming out soon. My YA paranormal Into the Fire is in it! I'm so excited. It's gorgeous! And it's the thumbnail for the video! Check it out!

That's it for me. What's on your mind today?

Cover Reveal: The Other Tree by DK Mok

Summary:
It’s been four years since Chris Arlin graduated with a degree that most people think she made up, and she’s still no closer to scraping up funding for her research into rare plants. Instead, she’s stacking shelves at the campus library, until a suspiciously well-dressed man offers her a lucrative position on a scientific expedition.

For Chris, the problem isn’t the fact that they’re searching for the Biblical Tree of Life. Nor is it the fact that most of the individuals on the expedition seem to be fashionably lethal mercenaries. The problem is that the mission is being backed by SinaCorp, the corporation responsible for a similar, failed expedition on which her mother died eleven years ago.

However, when Chris’s father is unexpectedly diagnosed with inoperable cancer, Chris sees only one solution. Vowing to find the Tree of Life before SinaCorp’s mercenaries, Chris recruits Luke, an antisocial campus priest undergoing a crisis of faith. Together, they embark on a desperate race to find Eden. However, as the hunt intensifies, Chris discovers growing evidence of her mother’s strange behaviour before her death, and she begins to realise that SinaCorp isn’t the only one with secrets they want to stay buried.

Coming December 2013 from Spence City, an imprint of Spencer Hill Press.

What do you think of the cover and blurb?

Less is More

This month I received a comment from one of my amazing editors saying that she loved how I could say so much in so few words. She was referring to alterations she suggested to strengthen the story, but it made me think. My style is to say more with less. That's me.

I'm not one for books with lengthy descriptions or long, drawn-out explanations. I don't want to insult my readers by spelling everything out for them. So I try to say more with less. Honestly, I learned this writing short fiction because I was constantly having to tell full stories within small word counts. I guess that carried over into my novel writing. 

I admit that books with lengthy paragraphs of narration scare me. I shy away from them and prefer more white space on the page. Maybe that too contributes to my "less is more" attitude.

What about you? Do you prefer when authors can say a lot in fewer words or do like more lengthy descriptions?

Monday Mishmash 1/28/13

Happy Monday! Here's my mishmash of thoughts:
Love All Poll  Since my new novella, Love All, which just released last week, has a love triangle, I thought it would be fun to hear from readers and see if more people are Team Ash or Team Noah. So in my sidebar, you'll see a poll. And, yes, you can choose both guys if you find yourself torn between the two. You can even change your response if you change your mind as the series continues.Touch of Death Facebook Quiz  I'm working on a FB quiz for Touch of Death, so read up and get ready! More details soon.Seeking Pictures!  If you've bought one of my books, take a picture of you holding it. (Yes, ebooks totally count.) I want to post them on FB and my website. As a thank you, I'll send you SWAG.Buy Links  It took me long enough, but I finally got the Amazon buy now buttons on my website and right here in my sidebar. It was so easy I felt a little silly for not being able to figure it out without asking for help.Novellas  I'm really loving novellas right now. They're quick reads, so I can tear right through a lot in a short amount of time. With my schedule lately, that's a really good thing.That's it for me. What's on your mind today?

*My free monthly newsletter goes out this evening (5pm EST). If you aren't signed up but would like to receive one, go here.*

The Zombie Prom Pictures!

As promised, here are some pictures from the zombie prom! Now, technically, most of these are pre-prom pictures because the prom was quite dark and many of my pictures came out too dark to see. I know, boo. I hear you. But enjoy these anyway. Me, Lisa Amowitz (author of Breaking Glass), and Kendra Saunders  (author of Death and Mr. Right) hanging out the night before the prom.



My book on sale at the Spencer Hill Press/Broad Universe table in the dealer room.

Flyers for the zombie prom
I got to be Prom Queen!
Prom prep

I was the only non-zombie since I went as Jodi, my MC, so the zombies tried to bite me a lot.  Rich "The Closer" Storrs, after he was zombified!
My editor, Trisha Wooldridge, who zombified everyone quite nicely.
The one and only Kate Kaynak, who was hands down the best dancing zombie.
One of the few pictures from the actual prom that I was able to lighten enough to see!


I love that it looks like Trish's husband's face is actually bleeding down his hand. Yes, I get how gross that would be but it was all in good zombie fun.
There may also be a video that will soon be uploaded to YouTube with all the zombies dancing "Gangnam Style". ;)

Love All is Here!

Love All is officially here!
Synopsis:Seventeen-year-old Meg Flannigan wasn’t very lucky at love. In sophomore year, her idiotic boyfriend dumped her by making out with another girl in front of her locker. Ouch! Now a senior, and with a little more self-confidence, Meg catches the eye of not one, but two guys at school. Lucky! Both attend her tennis matches, vie for her attention, and are each gorgeous in their own way. So what’s the problem? Meg has already chosen one of them, and the one waiting in the sidelines will do anything to change her mind. She’s enjoys the attention right up until it’s her heart that’s caught in the middle, and she risks losing both. Can Meg Love All, or will choosing be her undoing? 
Find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Add it on Goodreads.
I wanted to share the playlist for this book, but I actually have a playlist for the novella series, so I'm only going to tell you the songs that apply to this book in particular. Here they are in no special order:
Be Your Everything by Boys Like Girls  

Yours to Hold by Skillet

Lost in You by Three Days Grace


And to celebrate, I'm giving away some SWAG!







The giveaway will run until 11:59pm on February 1. It's open internationally, but I found out some countries won't permit coins to be shipped into them, so if you're international, the coins won't be included.

Good luck!

*For those who asked, pictures from the zombie prom will be posted on Friday!*

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