P.D. Workman's Blog, page 130
September 29, 2015
Two Teasers: Earth Afire and Questing for a Dream
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!
Two teasers for you today! One is for Earth Afire, from Orson Scott Card, which I just finished reading. This is part of the trilogy that precedes Ender’s Game. The other is from my book, Questing for a Dream, which I am launching very soon! (And may actually be available by the time you read this…)
Bingwen nodded. He should have expected this. Of course the librarian wouldn’t believe him. Something as serious as an alien threat would need to come from a credible source: the news or the government or other adults, not from an eight-year-old son of a rice farmer.
Orson Scott Card, Earth Afire
One hundred years before Ender’s Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. This is the story of the First Formic War.
Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn’t believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame.
And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.
Fans of Ender’s Game will thrill to Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston’s Earth Afire.
Second Teaser…
And, from Questing for a Dream:
Nadie’s stomach growled and her mouth watered at the suggestion, but she shook her head. “I have to look after Luyu. Make sure she gets dinner. Maybe I can come over later after I put her down for bed.”
Mouse sighed dramatically. “Yeah. Sure. Whenever is good for you.”
“I need to look after Luyu,” Nadie said firmly, giving him a glare. “She depends on me.”
P.D. Workman, Questing for a Dream
Nadie is a bright but rebellious teen growing up Manitoba Cree. Living in abject poverty, she tries to help care for the younger children in the band. Devastated by the drowning death of her little cousin and unable to overcome her grief, Nadie leaves the band.
How can she find her own place in a foreign world where she is abused and discriminated against, and for the first time in her life, completely alone?
September 22, 2015
Excerpt from The Devil’s Due
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!
One of the books I am reading this week is The Devil’s Due by Steven F. Freeman. It is a kidnap thriller set in Afghanistan (book five in a series, but I haven’t read the others) and has been very engaging so far!
The message header indicated the sender was Mastana, the young Afghani Alton had befriended several years ago after rescuing her from a terrorist blast in a Kabul marketplace. The terseness of Mastana’s message matched its desperation: “Alton, help me.”
Steven F. Freeman, The Devil’s Due
Former Army Captain Alton Blackwell never thought he’d return to Afghanistan.
Now he has no choice.
While on their honeymoon, cryptologist Alton Blackwell and FBI Agent Mallory Wilson receive a frantic plea for help. Resourceful Afghani teenager Mastana Meer, once instrumental in rescuing a mutual friend from Afghanistan terrorists, finds herself coerced into a nefarious plot by her Al-Qaeda uncle.
Having escaped the clutches of her terrorist uncle, the teen is days away from leaving Kabul for a better life when Alton and Mallory lose all contact with her.
As the former soldiers race to Afghanistan to search for Mastana, they battle Al-Qaeda terrorists, a resurgent cult of evil, and a web of political intrigue in which the label of friend and foe is not easily assigned. The duo must summon all their investigatory powers and combat skills in a desperate bid to track down their young friend and rescue her before her captors’ malevolent designs can be set in motion.
September 21, 2015
First Portuguese Translation: Por Conta Própria (Stand Alone)
Por Conta Própria is the second foreign language translation of Stand Alone. (The first was Spanish.) I really enjoyed working with Portuguese translator Juliano Timbó Martins and he put a lot of thought into giving Portuguese readers an authentic translation of my story.
Click the cover or here for buy links!
Justine é louca?
Todos acham que sim…
Sua mãe. Os garotos da escola, os professores e os coordenadores também. Até os policiais que a pegam vagueando no meio da noite – e talvez principalmente eles.
O psicólogo de Justine diz que ela é ‘problemática’, mas isso significa a mesma coisa. Ele acredita que os pesadelos vívidos e recorrentes dela, além do seu comportamento agressivo, apontam para algum trauma do passado; mas Emy, a mãe de Justine, não consegue explicar isso.
Antes Justine tinha Christian, seu melhor amigo e parceiro de skate. Ele era o único que a aceitava. Talvez por que andar de skate seja o único momento em que Justine é realmente livre para ser ela mesma. Agora que Christian se foi… Justine tem o pensamento fixo de que chegou ao fundo do poço.
Mesmo quando ela vê a sua vida girando num turbilhão cada vez mais fora de controle, Justine não pode desistir do seu sentimento de quem ela é – alguém muito diferente da amável filha que Emy espera que ela seja – para simplesmente se ajustar e ser feliz. Justine tem certeza de que Emy mantém em segredo a chave para quem ela realmente é. Mas, se este for o caso, Emy não quer abrir o jogo.
–À medida que PD Workman o leva para dentro da cabeça de Justine, você começa a imaginar o que, de fato, a faz agir da forma que age. Boa sorte, se você quiser tentar colocar o livro de lado antes de descobrir o porquê… – Tom Grusendorf, Jr.
–Este livro é uma história maravilhosa e repleta de reviravoltas… que vai fazê-lo continuar virando as páginas até altas horas da madrugada. O final vai surpreendê-lo. Uma história incrível. – Linda S.
September 16, 2015
Ruby now available in Español
Looking to add some books to your Spanish library? The translation of the award-winning Ruby Between the Cracks is now available: El Mal Camino de Ruby.
Si le preguntas a Ruby, ella te diría que está feliz con su vida. Ella es fuerte e independiente y no necesita a nadie más. El camino que la ha llevado hasta aquí no ha sido fácil y ha bloqueado muchas cosas de su mente.
Pero las cosas no son color de rosa como todos creen y el camino que le espera está lleno no solo de pandillas, drogas y depresión, sino que también de otros desafíos que Ruby ni se había imaginado.
— Sabes que es un buen libro cuando te tienes que recordar constantemente que los personajes no son personas reales. De verdad me importó Ruby y me dio muy malos momentos. Esperé desesperadamente que su historia tuviera un final feliz.
— «Ruby» saca a luz la complicada y brutal relación entre la enfermeda mental, pobreza y abuso… un libro que no podía dejar de leer.
— «Ruby» me hizo pasar por un muy mal momento y tuve que dejar de leer el libro un par de veces porque necesitaba volver a la realidad… ¡No había ocasión que dejara de leer porque quería saber como iba terminar la historia!… ¡No puedo esperar por la segunda parte!
September 15, 2015
Excerpt from Mary Higgins Clark’s On the Street Where You Live
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!
I don’t know about you, but Mary Higgins Clark is one of my favourite suspense writers. I first read my mom’s copy of The Cradle Will Fall as a young teen, and it scared the heck out of me. This week I am reading On the Street Where You Live.
The first entry was dated, September 7, 1891. It began with the words “Madeline is dead by my hand.”
Mary Higgins Clark, On the Street Where You Live
In the gripping new novel from America’s Queen of Suspense, a young woman is haunted by two murders that are closely linked — despite the one hundred and ten years that separate them.
Following the acrimonious breakup of her marriage and the searing experience of being pursued by an obsessed stalker, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham accepts an offer to leave Albany and work in a major law firm in Manhattan.
Feeling a need for roots, she buys her ancestral home, a restored Victorian house in the historic New Jersey seaside resort town of Spring Lake. Her family had sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily’s forebears, Madeline Shapley, then still a young girl, disappeared.
Now, more than a century later, as the house is being renovated and the backyard excavated for a pool, the skeleton of a young woman is found. She is identified as Martha Lawrence, who had disappeared from Spring Lake over four year ago. Within her skeletal hand is the finger bone of another woman with a ring still on it — a Shapley family heirloom.
In seeking to find the link between her family’s past and the recent murder, Emily becomes a threat to a devious and seductive killer, who has chosen her as the next victim.
September 11, 2015
Reading List: Addiction Fiction
This is the fourth blog in my series on reading lists about mental illness. Previously published:
Young Adult books about Psychosis
Young Adult books about Depression (including Bipolar)
Fiction about Personality Disorders
I will again start with my own books featuring main characters with Addiction:
Winner of In the Margins Top Ten Books for Teens award.
If you asked Ruby, she’d tell you she’s happy with her life. She’s tough and independent and doesn’t depend on anyone else. The road that has led her here has not been easy, and she’s blocked a lot of it from her memory.
But things aren’t as rosy as she would have everyone believe, and the road ahead of her is filled not only with gangs, drugs, and depression, but other challenges that Ruby hasn’t even imagined.
Justin had made a mistake. A big, life-changing mistake.
He already failed June once. He wasn’t there when she needed him, and because of him, their lives will never be the same. June is everything to Justin, and he must be everything to her. He must protect June at all costs. Justin is prepared spend the rest of his life keeping her from getting hurt again.
But it seems they are always falling behind, barely keeping one step ahead of the nightmares.
There is always one more hazard, just around the corner.
“You’re a good kid, Henry.”
Everyone knew that he was a good guy; geeky, responsible, hard-working. Henry has had a lot to deal with in the past. Now, as he should be focusing on his schooling and preparing himself for the future, he is hindered by abuse, the challenge of raising his baby brother while dealing with his mother’s deep depressions, and the return of a ghost from the past Henry has tried his best to forget.
But it seems that Henry can’t avoid the nastiness of life. As hard as he tries, it’s one more disaster after another as his life spirals out of control.
Can Henry escape the darkness, or is he doomed to be consumed by it?
Raised to a life of crime, Sandy is a teenage prostitute, junkie, and con artist. She always joked that her Da taught her a trade, that it hadn’t hurt her to be brought up like she was.
But things keep getting more complicated, more dangerous, and Sandy doesn’t want to admit even to herself that she longs for an honest, normal life.
Even when she tries to change, things don’t go smoothly. Sandy’s past keeps interfering with her new relationships. In the end, if she and her family don’t pull together, Sandy will not be able to escape yet another ghost of her past. Do they have what it takes for her to change her life completely?
He never told what went on behind closed doors. But this time, he can’t remember.
Things never have been easy for Steven. He accepts that, and just makes the best of things. He might not have parents or a happy home. Or enough to eat most days. But at least he has a couple of loyal friends who stand by him and help out when they can. At least he has school, someplace he can go to escape the abuse.
But just when he thought things couldn’t get much worse, they did.
Steven is accused of murder. But that isn’t the worst part. The really bad part is not even knowing if he did it.
The other books that I have picked out are:
Go Ask Alice
A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale.
January 24th
After you’ve had it, there isn’t even life without drugs….
It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth — and ultimately her life.
Tweak, Growing up on Amphetamines
Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and Ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise. In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking, and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself. It’s a harrowing portrait — but not one without hope.
CrankIn Crank, Ellen Hopkins chronicles the turbulent and often disturbing relationship between Kristina, a character based on her own daughter, and the “monster,” the highly addictive drug crystal meth, or “crank.” Kristina is introduced to the drug while visiting her largely absent and ne’er-do-well father. While under the influence of the monster, Kristina discovers her sexy alter-ego, Bree: “there is no perfect daughter, / no gifted high school junior, / no Kristina Georgia Snow. / There is only Bree.” Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won’t, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank.
Mark Fallon is an overworked detective investigating a spate of attacks at a string of high profile city centre nightclubs. Scott is a dejected 24 year old struggling to make ends meet working for his brother and supplementing his income with a small-scale drug dealing operation. Angela is an attractive 23 year old, raised by her father, a career criminal and small time drug dealer who supplies Scott with cannabis. This is a chilling tale spanning a few months in the lives of Scott and Angela, where realizations about the present combine with shocking revelations from the past leading to an apocalyptic climax where they no longer know whom they can trust.
September 8, 2015
TeaserTuesday Double-Header!
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!
One of my ARC readers for Pursued by the Past (being released soon!) commented how much my main character reminded her of the main character in Murder with Peacocks, by Donna Andrews. So I have borrowed her copy, and it is quite funny how similar the characters are, particularly in their relationships with their mothers.
So I thought I would give you a teaser from both! First, Murder with Peacocks:
“Well, that’s settled,” Mother said, as Pam and I began clearing the dishes. “Tomorrow morning you’ll go down to Mrs. Waterston’s shop and make sure everything is going well.”
Donna Andrews, Murder with Peacocks
So far Meg Langslow’s summer is not going swimmingly. Down in her small Virginia hometown, she’s maid of honor at the nuptuals of three loved ones–each of whom has dumped the planning in her capable hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony, while another wants live peacocks on the law. Only help from the town’s drop-dead gorgeous hunk, disappointingly rumored to be gay, keeps Meg afloat in a sea of dotty relatives and outrageous neighbors.
And, in whirl of summer parties and picnics, Souther hospitality is strained to the limit by an offenseive newcomer who hints at skeletons in the guests’ closets. But it seems this lady has offended one too many when she’s found dead in suspicious circumstances, followed by a string of accidents–some fatal. Soon, level-headed Meg’s to-do list extends from flower arragements and bridal registries to catching a killer–before the next catered event is her own funeral…
And a bonus teaser from Pursued by the Past:
“Lydia didn’t want me to be upset when I heard. She didn’t want me to be surprised and be upset with you and make things tense. Are you going to meet her? You should.”
P.D. Workman, Pursued by the Past
Vanna had a good life. She had her challenges—like her mother’s high expectations of her—but all in all, she had a job she enjoyed, a fun hobby and friends. She didn’t need any complications.
But that all changed shortly after trying to break things off with Tino. The phone calls with no one on the other end. Anonymous gifts. Someone moving things around in her bedroom.
A restraining order changed nothing. If anything, it caused things to escalate. If Vanna wants her life back, she will have to take things into her own hands.
September 1, 2015
Excerpt from Roses are Red… Violet is Dead
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!
I won a copy of Roses are Red… Violet is Dead by Monica-Marie Vincent at a book launch party I participated in. It is a teen thriller with a Native American girl (Violet) as the protagonist. The book starts off with a bang:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Dump your boyfriend,
If you know what’s good for you.
Monica-Marie Vincent, Roses are Red… Violet is Dead
Violet Sumner has a stalker.
Between her largely dysfunctional family of two and the friends she doesn’t feel particularly close to, Violet thinks he’s the least of her problems. What she fails to understand is that the guy is no prankster and soon people turn up dead or missing. Because of her.
Things change when Violet’s best friend disappears and realization sinks in that the stalker means business. Denial put aside, Violet has no other option but to accept the help of police Sergeant Willard Kelley and his rather sweet protégé, to come to terms with the seriousness of the situation.
Yet nothing could’ve prepared her for her close up with the psycho.
Who will survive in this tale of obsession and misplaced devotion?
August 24, 2015
Excerpt from Skinny
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, read the rules at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!
This week I am reading Skinny: She was starving to fit in… by Laura L. Smith. Eating disorders are another of those issues that tugs on my heartstrings.
Melissa looked around to make sure no one was listening.
“Promise you won’t tell?” she asked, tilting her head toward Lindsey’s.
Laura L. Smith, Skinny: She was starving to fit in…
You can never be too thin…can you?
Melissa seems to have it all–grades, friends, dance team and the eye of the new guy in school. The one thing Melissa doesn’t have is a perfect body. But there are ways to fix that. Strict dieting and throwing up can’t be all bad, can they? Melissa soon finds the consequences are devastating, but turning back isn’t so easy. Will she hear God’s voice before it’s too late?
August 22, 2015
Nomination and promotions
Busy busy this week!
I am happy to be able to report to you that June & Justin has been nominated for the 2016 In the Margins Best Books for Teens award. (Previously I let you know that Tattooed Teardrops has been nominated. This is the same one that Ruby won a place in the Top Ten Best Books for Teens in 2015).
If you are looking for some fresh reading material, I have two books being promoted in the Dog Days Doldrums Buster sale:
Tattooed Teardrops is on for $0.99
Lion Within is free in the Kindle store
And if you are a fan of DTBs, I will be running a Goodreads Giveaway for a signed copy of Lion Within. Stay tuned!
