Stephanie Faris's Blog, page 16

Best Books of January

January is coming to an end, which means it's time to tell you all about the great books I read this month.




The first book I read this year is a Cyrano de Bergerac tale from an author who is new to the Aladdin M!x line, Joanne Levy.




In Crushing It, we meet a 12-year-old girl dealing with new feelings about her male neighbor. Kat and Tyler have been friends for their entire lives, yet over the summer Tyler blossomed into a hottie. Her BFF has also undergone a summertime transformation and, worst of all, her BFF now has a crush on him. The story follows the basic Cyrano de Bergerac theme, but the fact that Kat has had existing relationships with the couple she's helping makes it even more complex. Anyone who has ever felt "less than" can relate to Kat. This book has a very strong message about being yourself and embracing your interests as you try to find friends and romantic partners.

Every little girl loves mermaids. Even as an adult, the idea of an entire world taking place beneath the ocean is fascinating. So it's no surprise that Debbie Dadey's Mermaid Tales series is so popular. This month I read book #16 in the series.





In Flower Girl Dreams, all Pearl wants is to be a flower girl. When she hears her school's cafeteria worker is getting married, she may just get her chance. He's already chosen three of her friends to be flower girls. So she sets to work trying to win a spot--along the way her goals change, though. She finds herself dedicated to helping make it the best wedding ever. You just want to hug little Pearl. She has such a big heart and the lesson of the satisfaction we get from giving instead of receiving is one that we all can learn from.

I don't get to read picture books very often, so when I had the opportunity to purchase an autographed copy of this book from Susan Eaddy, I jumped at it!



Poppy's Best Paper is a beautifully illustrated picture book about a young rabbit who wants to be a writer when she grows up. She gets her chance to try it out when her teacher assigns a paper. When she finally turns in her paper, she's sure it will be a huge hit with the teacher. Instead, her friend, who doesn't even want to be an author, is the one whose paper is read to the class. This book has a very important message about friendship and jealousy--and it's something every single one of us will experience throughout our lives from time to time.

Stories about disappearances are always my favorites, so I couldn't wait to read Kelly Hashway's latest book. But this one was such a pleasant surprise!




Fading into the Shadows is an action-packed story about teens battling falling constellations. The shadows that lure the teens into this world creeped me out in a way few stories have in my life. And once there, the action didn't stop until the end. Plus, there's a love triangle with two guys that will win young readers' hearts. But what really keeps the tension going throughout the book is the race to stop the constellations before the people Ella cares about fade into shadows.

I always look for any excuse to read Sandra Cox's amazing books. Her recent re-release of a romantic suspense gave me a reason to read it and tell all of you about it!



At the center of The Crystal is a crystal ball that allows its owners to see the face of their one true love. For Gabriella, that face is a man she just happened to bump into before entering the store that is selling the ball. She buys the crystal globe in question and adventure ensues. That stranger just happens to want the globe for himself...and a chase ensues. There is plenty of tension between the main characters and enough intrigue to keep you turning the pages until the end!

Next up is a book by one of the most supportive blogger-authors I know. If you haven't read Beverly Stowe McClure's blog, definitely head over and subscribe. This month I read her September 2016 re-release of a 2013 book:




I love ghost stories...and I also love children's adventures in the style of Peter Pan. A Pirate, a Blockade Runner, and a Cat satisfies both of those loves, with a young boy and his friends discovering a ghost ship near an old lighthouse. Over the course of the story, this world provides a form of escape for the main character, who is going through a tough time at home. Kids will be able to relate well to this touching adventure.

What are you reading now?

Writing and Promoting: Does Age Change Our Approach?

Last year, my blogging buddy Karen Walker posed an interesting question as part of her blog post. She was questioning why she chose to do very little marketing for her most recent book release. Her question? Am I too old for this game?


It's actually a very good question. I know several authors who had serious careers going a couple of decades ago. Then at some point, they got tired of the hamster wheel that is creating, perfecting, and promoting a book and said, basically...



They'd reached an age where they just were over it. There's something interesting about that, though. While the thought of promoting their work seems exhausting, nothing stops them from continuing to write. They publish their own books or write for small presses that provide promotional help. They write and publish...but they feel no pressure to sell thousands of books.



Most authors hate the process of promoting our work. Asking social media followers to buy our books is just...



Begging a bookstore manager or librarian to carry your book is even worse.



I could easily see how "retirement" might mean writing more and begging less. In fact, when I picture writing at 80 years of age, this is what I see:



Hanging out in bookstores and talking to fellow book lovers is always fun. It's just the "hustle" of trying to sell just one more book.



Do you think age affects how we market our books? 

Cover Reveal: Incense and Peppermints by Cathrina Constantine

Cathrina Constantine is a friend and blogger who has a new book coming out. Today, I'm helping her with her cover reveal. Be sure you scroll down below the cover to read all about the book, which releases on March 10!



Blurb:

Peace demonstrations, sit-ins, and burning the U.S. flag following the escalation of the Vietnam War are leading to a catalyst known to the world as the Sixties, and a musical revolution, flower power, hippies, marijuana, and drugs are carrying the generations—young and old—into a new decade. All the while sixteen-year-old Mary Monroe is caught between being an innocent good girl and an autumn of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

When her brother offers a solution to her dilemma in the form of a little pill, Mary ignores the rumba in her brain and takes a walk on the wild side. Plunged into popularity and a life she’s only imagined, she meets Michael Covington, the hot newcomer, and she’s instantly drawn in by his less than flawless exterior and bad boy sex appeal. Caught up in the danger and excitement as they drift from party to party, into underground fight clubs, and through a series of drug and alcohol fueled adventures, Mary follows her new crush into a world where young girls are never truly safe from the predators lurking in the shadows and young men are hiding from the harsh reality of war.

Feeling buzzed and as if her life is spinning out of control, Mary is assaulted by an unknown man at a party, and she’s left questioning if the enigmatic Michael is truly her hero or if he is the face behind the terrible attack. With every piece of information Mary learns about Michael, her doubts grow deeper, but with every minute she spends in his presence, so does her love.

With the war and her fear threatening to separate Mary and Michael forever, only the death of a friend, a crushing confession, and her own sensibilities can carry her over the threshold between adolescence and adulthood.

Add it on Goodreads.


Bio:

Cathrina Constantine is the Best Selling author of Don't Forget To Breathe. Her book won Readers' Favorite International Book Award for 2015 and The Literary Classics Seal of Approval and Literary Classics Gold Award. Her Paranormal Fantasy, Wickedly They Come has been awarded the 5 Star Seal from Reader's Favorite. Tallas from her dystopian series received Literary Classics Silver Award and Literary Classics Seal of Approval.

Cathrina resides in Western New York with her husband, five children, two Labrador Retrievers and her cat, Bones. When not attached to her computer, she likes to take long walks in the woods with her dogs, drink way too much coffee, and is an avid movie watcher. She loves music and doesn't need a dance floor to shake a leg.
Links:
Amazon| Facebook | Blog | Twitter

Introducing Forgotten by Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith has been a busy, busy author lately. The first book in her The Deception Game series came out in late November and here she is with its sequel. Scroll down to read all about it!





Blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Sienna is no stranger to heartache and loss. But this time, it's different; someone—or something—has tampered with a loved one's memories, and she's determined to get answers.

The trail leads her to the glittering skyscrapers and modern luxuries of Rubex, the Capital of Pacifica, where she infiltrates the government's Agency for Intelligence and Genetics. But answers are not always easy to come by, especially when her own memories may have been altered. Luckily, Zane Ryder is there to help her put the pieces back together, his devotion and concern muddying the waters between friendship and something more.

When Sienna gets too close to uncovering dark Agency secrets, she's framed for the murder of a prominent government official, sending her on the run. Sienna's heart may be torn about who she loves, but none of that really matters anymore—because the only thing that awaits her now is a death sentence.


Buy Links:
Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
Bio:

Kristin Smith writes young adult contemporary and science fiction novels. When she's not writing, you can find her dreaming about the beach, beating her boys at Just Dance, or belting out karaoke (from the comfort of her own home). Kristin currently resides in the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina with her husband and five incredibly loud but extremely cute boys. To read more about her obsession with YA novels or her addiction to chocolate, you can visit her at kristinsmithbooks.com.



Links:
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Here Come the New Years Resolutioners

As December drew to a close, I enjoyed the peace and quiet at the gym. I was tempted to do what everyone else was doing, which was basically THIS:



But how could I when the gym looked like a ghost town?



It's the perfect chance to get a parking space close to the front. You know, to save steps before going inside and walking three miles...



If you're into gym equipment, you don't have to wait in line for a treadmill. The cardio room looks like this:



Then comes January 1st. The first day you pull into a gym parking lot in early January, you see the difference.



Of course, I've done this before. I know these people have maybe two months in them before they're back to this:



But somehow, the "resolutioners" are all the more annoying because of that. I mean, I know I'll still be there in July. Yet I have to deal with this for a couple of months every year.



Have you ever joined a gym in January? Did you stick with it?

Introducing Fading into the Shadows by Kelly Hashway

It's release week for one of my favorite author-bloggers. I've been waiting for this book to come out so I can download it and read it! Here's Kelly Hashway's latest cover. Scroll down to read all about her new book, available for download now.




Blurb:
When sixteen-year-old Ella Andrews’s best friend, Avery, goes missing, she’ll do anything to get him back—starting with punching the no-brain cop who couldn’t care less about the disappearance.

Ella’s convinced Avery’s been kidnapped, and she tries everything to find him—even following a strange shadow to another world where the constellations are real-life figures in the sky. But three star groups have fallen and are destroying the world.

The fallen constellations are not the only enemy. Melanie, the princess of Stellaris, is forcing Ella, Avery, and an army of other kids kidnapped from their world to fight the rogue constellations, even as the land is draining away their life. The longer they stay, the more they fade into substanceless shadows—a fate worse than death.

Can Ella save Stellaris before there's nothing left of her and Avery?


Buy Links:
Amazon | B&N
Bio:

Kelly Hashway grew up reading R.L. Stein’s Fear Street novels and writing stories of her own, so it was no surprise to her family when she majored in English and later obtained a masters degree in English Secondary Education from East Stroudsburg University. After teaching middle school language arts for seven years, Hashway went back to school and focused specifically on writing. She is now the author of three young adult series, one middle grade series, and several picture books. She also writes contemporary romance under the pen name Ashelyn Drake. When she isn’t writing, Hashway works as a freelance editor for small presses as well as for her own list of clients. In her spare time, she enjoys running, traveling, and volunteering with the PTO. Hashway currently resides in Pennsylvania with her husband, daughter, and two pets.

Hashway is represented by Sarah Negovetich of Corvisiero Literary Agency.
Links:

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amazon

Mystery Monday: The Hound of the Baskervilles

It's Monday, which means it's time for another...



Every Monday, I'm presenting a new mystery. Some have been solved...some remain unsolved to this day. 

Today's mystery was requested by author (and my mom) Valerie Capps. It's a very literary one, so book lovers will love it. It introduces a little-known mystery involving this book:



The Hound of the Baskervilles was released in 1901, after killing off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem. The story was published as a serial in a publication called The Strand Magazine.



Unfortunately, Holmes had a little help coming up with the story--a fact he conveniently left out when he sold it. However, he did acknowledge he had that help in the acknowledgments as a footnote on the first page of Chapter One.



Doyle also paid his friend, Fletcher Robinson, £500, which was a lot of money for the time. Robinson died in 1907 but before his death, he published a series of short stories that listed him as a "joint author with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" in the Baskerville stories. Doyle did not deny the claim.


Robinson's short story compilation. Photo credit: London: Harper & Brother, June 1905
Later, Doyle claimed credit for the plot and every word of the narrative. However, Robinson's coachman, whose name was Harry Baskerville, said he personally witnessed Robinson writing entire sections of what became the novel.


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
In 2000, an author took the allegations to an all new level. Rodger Garrick-Steele spent 11 years investigating the plagiarism charges and said Doyle plagiarized Robinson's work, had an affair with his wife, and conspired with her to poison her husband (who died at 36).



A court said Garrick-Steele was "totally unreliable" and the claims were dropped. To this day, though, Robinson is given no credit for his help in writing The Hound of the Baskervilles. 



Do you think £500 and an acknowledgment should have been enough?

Thank you SO much to Jacqui Murray for featuring Piper Morgan on her blog!

S.E. Hinton and Feeling Like an Outsider

Last week, an ongoing controversy fired up yet again on Twitter. In one corner was S.E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders, among other books:



In the other corner? Half the internet. Okay, maybe not that many people, but it definitely seemed there were more people against the author than for her in the Twitterverse.



It all started when S.E. tweeted this:



Apparently, she feels she's dealing with regular criticism about the lack of diversity in her books. 



Tired of this, she launched the first missile. The internet fired back. People took issue with the fact that she felt she was being attacked "for being heterosexual." As everyone fought, nobody seemed to take a step back and say...

"Why are we arguing over books that were published 40+ years ago?"



Unless I'm missing something, S.E. Hinton's last young adult novel was released in 1988. She released a couple of adult novels in 2004 and 2008. Yet her argument isn't that she seems to have misplaced her TIME MACHINE...



Instead, she's making a different kind of statement.



Okay, so let's assume (HOPE!) that she has a new book in the works so she's actually able to make a decision on this issue. Authors today know we should try to work diversity into our storylines. Many of today's children/teens have friends who aren't white. Who aren't heterosexual. It's important to introduce characters who aren't all white and heterosexual, even if it isn't an issue in the book itself.



In general, authors like S.E. Hinton have the power to introduce large audiences to the diversity of today's world. But S.E. Hinton doesn't feel qualified to tell those stories because she hasn't lived that life herself. She says she can only write what she knows...



But do you really need to know what a person has been through to diversify your fiction? What do you think?

Introducing Crushing It by Joanne Levy

Today I'm introducing an author who is new to the Aladdin M!x line. It isn't Joanne Levy's first book--Small Medium at Large came out in 2012 and won all kinds of awards and accolades. Her new book is a fun twist on the Cyrano de Bergerac tale. Scroll down to read all about it!





Blurb:

Twelve-year-old Kat woos the boy next door on behalf of her best friend, and in the process realizes that true beauty—and true confidence—comes from the inside in this hilarious M!X novel from the author of Small Medium at Large.

Kat is already so over seventh grade. It doesn’t help that her best friend and cousin, Olivia, grew a foot over the summer and won a spot on the school’s dance team, shooting her up on the popularity scale. In the jungle that is middle school, Olivia is a gazelle. Braces-wearing, manga-loving, uncoordinated Kat is a warthog.

Plus, Tyler, Kat’s next-door neighbor and buddy since birth, morphed into a really cute boy over the summer. Suddenly the person Kat’s used to playing Xbox with is causing her stomach to do cartwheels.

When Olivia confesses that she has a crush on Tyler and wants to ask him to the Fall Ball dance, Kat knows there’s going to be a problem: Tyler thinks Olivia is just another ditsy girl who only cares about lip gloss and boy bands. But since Kat’s one of Tyler’s oldest friends, Olivia’s sure she’ll know how to get his attention.

Trying to be a good friend and squash her own feelings, Kat makes it her mission to get the two of them together. From writing “Tyler cheat sheets” listing his favorite things, to feeding Olivia lines through her headphones during Tyler-focused study sessions, Kat devises schemes by which Tyler will fall for Olivia. And to her delight—or maybe horror—her plan begins to work. Now that Olivia’s caught Tyler’s attention, Kat has to wonder if she’s fooled Tyler into falling for the wrong girl. But what boy would ever choose a warthog over a gazelle?


Buy Links:
Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
Bio:

Joanne Levy’s love of books began at a very early age. Being the youngest and the only female among four children, and the daughter to voracious readers, she was often left to her own devices and could frequently be found sitting in a quiet corner with her nose in a book. 

A survivor of the corporate world, Joanne now works from home, supporting other authors and creating the friends she wishes she had when she was a kid. 

She lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband, two mischievous cats, a mean African Grey parrot and a sweet but not-so-smart dog. When she’s not busy working at her treadmill desk, she enjoys reading (obviously), painting (badly), and taking long walks with her faithful writing companion, Labrador Retriever, Zoe. Crushing It is her second published novel, her first was Small Medium at Large.
Links:
Website| Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Mystery Monday: Evelyn Hartley

It's Monday, which means it's time for another...



Every Monday, I'm presenting a new mystery. Some have been solved...some remain unsolved to this day. 

The 50s were an innocent time, where families felt safe raising their children. Evelyn Hartley's story is especially touching not only because it happened in 1953, but also because it happened in the small town of La Crosse, Wisconsin.



On October 24, 1953, the entire town of La Crosse was preparing for the big game between La Crosse State Teachers College and River Falls. Professor Vigo Rasmusen and his wife were planning to attend the game, but their original babysitter had to cancel. He then called Evelyn Hartley, a 15-year-old who had babysat their child before.



Professor Rasmusen picked Evelyn up at her house and drove her to his home, five minutes away. His wife gave her instructions that included putting the baby to bed at 7 p.m. and covering her with a blanket at 7:15. The professor, his wife, and their 7-year-old daughter left the house at 6:45.


Professor Rasmusen's house
At 7:00, Evelyn's mom got a strange feeling. She decided not to call, though, since she knew her daughter always called at 8:30.


Evelyn's parents and sister. Photo courtesy Thin Air Podcast.
At 8:30, when Evelyn didn't call, her dad called the Rasmusen house. After another try, he decided to go to the scene himself. At 9:20, he arrived at the house and saw one of Evelyn's shoes and her glasses on the floor through one of the windows. Continuing around the house, he saw an open basement window. He found his daughter's other shoe at the foot of the stairs.



When the police arrived, they found a pool of blood just outside the basement window. There was also blood inside the basement near the window. Both were tested and matched Evelyn's blood type.



An active search began for Evelyn. The footprints indicated a men's size 11 shoe. Police found those footprints inside and outside the house, as well as in the backyards of neighbors, leading them to believe the perpetrator may have considered several houses before breaking into the Rasmusen home. 


Crime scene photo
Neighbors in the area reported hearing three or four screams around 7:15 p.m. The baby was in bed but not covered, further suggesting the abduction happened between 7 and 7:15 p.m.



Neighbors also reported seeing a dark tan sedan in the area around that time. Blood stains were found on the side of the Rasmusen home, including the bloody imprint of a human hand. More blood was found smeared on the side of a neighboring garage. At a house on the corner, the pool of blood was so thick, the police are certain someone likely lay in that spot for a long period of time.



The blood trail vanished at the end of the road. Police believe Evelyn was taken away in a car. A couple of days later, a man reported nearly hitting a two-toned early 1940s car that was speeding away that evening. He said he saw a man and young girl inside. He said just a few minutes earlier, he'd seen the same two people walking together in the area where the blood was spotted. They were staggering, but he'd assumed they were just drunk.



A similar car was reported near the La Crosse River Bridge. The car sped away when it was seen by the police. Later police found a size 11 "Hood Mogul" shoe and a jacket nearby. Blood on the shoes and jacket were confirmed to be Evelyn's blood type.



Although Evelyn's disappearance sparked one of the biggest searches in Wisconsin history, no one was ever charged. Notorious killer Ed Gein has long been considered as a possible perpetrator, since he was visiting relatives just a few blocks away. He was questioned but never charged. He died in a mental institution in 1984.

What do you think happened to Evelyn Hartley?