Maria Savva's Blog - Posts Tagged "ya"
Inspiring Teens Blog Hop: Interview & Giveaway, with author Ed Drury!
I'm very happy to be taking part in the Inspiring Teens Blog Hop this week, organised by authors Vickie Johnstone and Greta Burroughs!
There are lots of authors and bloggers taking part in this event, and tons of giveaways, with many YA/children's books up for grabs. For a full list of the participants, go here: http://booksbygretaburroughs.weebly.c...
Today, I have an interview with author Ed Drury, and he's giving away 3 e-book copies of his book: The Whale Whisperers of Ensorclea
Book Description
On a planet very much like Earth, a special group of people have answers that can unravel a plot against the most powerful leader on the planet.
Let's find out a bit more about the author:
INTERVIEW WITH ED DRURY:
Reading
Why do you think Teen Read Week is important?
Reading is a lifelong habit, which is hopefully established at an early age. It is important throughout your entire life to have good reading skills. With so many distractions during the teen years, it is valuable to encourage a connection to literature.
How do you think we could encourage youngsters to read more?
All readers look for reading that is interesting, entertaining, and hopefully enlightening. I think the main thing with teens is to attract their interest and hold it.
When you were a teenager what books did you like to read and did you have an all-time favourite character?
I read a diverse collection of books, but was really hooked on science fiction novels by the likes of Phillip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Herbert, and many more. I did not have a favourite character as much as a favourite genre.
Writing
Were you writing as a teenager? If so, what were you writing and what inspired you? Did a person inspire you to write?
I dabbled in writing fiction as a teen. I would say I was most influenced by Mark Twain. I did a lot of song writing during those years; my lyrical influences were diverse, including Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon.
Do you think today’s teens are in a better position if they want to be a writer than you were all those years ago?
It is tempting to talk about the miles I had to walk through the snow to get to a desk to write on parchment with quill and ink, but really writing is basically the same process today. There may be more resources to young writers today, but really it always comes down to putting the words together, creating the manuscript.
What advice would you give a youngster who enjoys writing?
Keep writing, keep reading. Ask questions, never stop asking questions, and observe the world around you. Some think that writers withdraw into a dark place from which to commune with the muse, but I think the best writers are very much engaged with the world they live in.
Your books
What is your latest book about?
My latest book is the final instalment to my series, the Whale Whisperers saga. This trilogy explores a fictional empire and its struggles to transition from a military industrial economy to a sustainable peaceful one. To do this they need to engage older cultures who still remember how to connect with the resources of the planet and life without exploitation.
Are you working on anything new at the moment?
I'm working on a collection of short stories, as well as a novel set in the 1970s.
What do you love about being an author?
I enjoy most every aspect of being a writer, but what I love most is the physical process of putting words to the page.
ED DRURY’S LINKS
Amazon Page
Facebook fan page
Website
Music Pages
Soundclick
Bandcamp
ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!
Follow the link below to the easy-entry Rafflecopter giveaway. You could win one of 3 e-book copies of Ed's book The Whale Whisperers of Ensorclea. Good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
A couple of new releases I've heard about
I've just found out about 2 new releases and these books are going straight on my to-read list, in fact, I've already started reading one of them.
Firstly, Lisette Brodey has released the second book in her paranormal YA series: the "Desert Series", DESERT STAR. Having read the first book in the series, I'm very much looking forward to reading this one.
You can get a copy from Amazon by following the link: http://www.amazon.com/DESERT-STAR-Des...
This series would make a great Christmas gift for the book lover in your life. Even though it's listed as a Young Adult series, I think it can be enjoyed by all ages.
The first book in the series, Mystical High is currently available at just 99 cents: http://www.amazon.com/MYSTICAL-HIGH-D...
The second new release I've heard about is a collection of short stories with Christmas as a theme. Justin Bog has just published Hark---A Christmas Collection. This is a collection of six short stories. I couldn't wait to start reading them and have read the first three already. They are not your typical Christmas stories, they uncover and examine the darker and lonelier side of Christmas. Justin's writing is compulsive reading and I'm enjoying this book. It's the perfect time of year to read it.
You can get your copy here (in Kindle or paperback): http://www.amazon.com/Hark--Christmas...
I think this would make the perfect gift for the short story lover in your life.
Firstly, Lisette Brodey has released the second book in her paranormal YA series: the "Desert Series", DESERT STAR. Having read the first book in the series, I'm very much looking forward to reading this one.
You can get a copy from Amazon by following the link: http://www.amazon.com/DESERT-STAR-Des...
This series would make a great Christmas gift for the book lover in your life. Even though it's listed as a Young Adult series, I think it can be enjoyed by all ages.
The first book in the series, Mystical High is currently available at just 99 cents: http://www.amazon.com/MYSTICAL-HIGH-D...
The second new release I've heard about is a collection of short stories with Christmas as a theme. Justin Bog has just published Hark---A Christmas Collection. This is a collection of six short stories. I couldn't wait to start reading them and have read the first three already. They are not your typical Christmas stories, they uncover and examine the darker and lonelier side of Christmas. Justin's writing is compulsive reading and I'm enjoying this book. It's the perfect time of year to read it.
You can get your copy here (in Kindle or paperback): http://www.amazon.com/Hark--Christmas...
I think this would make the perfect gift for the short story lover in your life.
New Release: Drawn Apart, by Lisette Brodey
Talented author, Lisette Brodey has just released the third book in her YA Paranormal trilogy "The Desert Series". The 3rd book is "Drawn Apart".
About the book:
When Avalon Martelli and Stephanie Lambert meet at the start of their junior year at Mystekal High, they form an instant connection. Stephanie is from South Jersey and Avalon from North Jersey, and they both feel out of place in the Southern California desert.
Aside from having a home state in common, they each possess a talent for art and the heartbreak of a broken family. Avalon has the gift of sight, where the future is sometimes revealed in her paintings, while Stephanie’s drawings are all about forever love. As Stephanie, a self-described poetry geek and hopeless romantic, talks about past lives and eternal happiness, Avalon denies she’s in love with her best guy friend, River Dalworth, who is attending art school in Los Angeles.
Only weeks before graduation, Stephanie is in a car accident and falls into a coma. Devastated, Avalon believes it is all her fault. The night before, she had painted Stephanie with her head against the steering wheel—and hadn’t told her. She confides this to River, who has come home to be with her, but he can’t convince her she’s not to blame. Avalon loudly proclaims to the universe that she no longer wants her gift, but River warns her she may receive another one in its place.
Avalon and her family, along with Stephanie’s mother, pray for a miracle. River tries to console her, but she finds his presence difficult, knowing he has someone else who “just might be the one.” Trying to push her own pain and disappointment aside, Avalon keeps vigil for her best friend, hoping that Stephanie will wake up and have her greatest wish fulfilled— the meeting of her soul mate.
I really enjoyed the first book in the series and am looking forward to finding time to read the others.
You can buy the new book on Amazon worldwide:
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/DRAWN-APART-D...
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/DRAWN-APART-Des...
Author links:
Website: http://lisettebrodey.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrodeyAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisetteBrodey
About the book:
When Avalon Martelli and Stephanie Lambert meet at the start of their junior year at Mystekal High, they form an instant connection. Stephanie is from South Jersey and Avalon from North Jersey, and they both feel out of place in the Southern California desert.
Aside from having a home state in common, they each possess a talent for art and the heartbreak of a broken family. Avalon has the gift of sight, where the future is sometimes revealed in her paintings, while Stephanie’s drawings are all about forever love. As Stephanie, a self-described poetry geek and hopeless romantic, talks about past lives and eternal happiness, Avalon denies she’s in love with her best guy friend, River Dalworth, who is attending art school in Los Angeles.
Only weeks before graduation, Stephanie is in a car accident and falls into a coma. Devastated, Avalon believes it is all her fault. The night before, she had painted Stephanie with her head against the steering wheel—and hadn’t told her. She confides this to River, who has come home to be with her, but he can’t convince her she’s not to blame. Avalon loudly proclaims to the universe that she no longer wants her gift, but River warns her she may receive another one in its place.
Avalon and her family, along with Stephanie’s mother, pray for a miracle. River tries to console her, but she finds his presence difficult, knowing he has someone else who “just might be the one.” Trying to push her own pain and disappointment aside, Avalon keeps vigil for her best friend, hoping that Stephanie will wake up and have her greatest wish fulfilled— the meeting of her soul mate.
I really enjoyed the first book in the series and am looking forward to finding time to read the others.
You can buy the new book on Amazon worldwide:
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/DRAWN-APART-D...
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/DRAWN-APART-Des...
Author links:
Website: http://lisettebrodey.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrodeyAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisetteBrodey
Interview with Shelley Wilson
I've been following Shelley Wilson on Twitter for a while. She's very friendly and supportive. She divides her time between fiction and non-fiction writing. I haven't read her books yet, but have heard about her YA fantasy trilogy. It sounds great. I invited Shelley here for a chat to find out more about her writing.
INTERVIEW WITH SHELLEY WILSON
Welcome to my blog, Shelley! Thank you for joining me. Please introduce yourself.
Hi Maria, thank you so much for inviting me over for a chat. My name is Shelley Wilson, and I live in Solihull in the West Midlands with my three teenage children, a fat fish, and a loopy black cat called Luna.
Hahaha!
I write non-fiction for adults in the self-help and personal development genre as well as young adult fantasy fiction - I’m like the Jekyll and Hyde of the book world! My background is in Holistic Health, so the self-help books are a bit like my day job role. Writing my young adult books is pure self-satisfaction. I might be in my mid-forties, but I’m a huge YA fan.
Tell us about your latest book.
Just recently, my non-fiction book has been getting a lot of airtime. I was incredibly fortunate to appear in the June issue of Writers’ Forum Magazine, and around the same time, I hit the number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list for self-help and women’s fiction. All of this is fabulous news, but it also means that my poor fiction books get overlooked. So, to put this right, I’m going to share my YA news with your readers.
My Guardian Series is a fantasy trilogy based around the protagonist, Amber Noble. She is a sixteen-year-old Oracle, who has a ton of special powers thrust upon her and struggles to cope. She never believed in magic, so it’s all a bit much for her to accept. Her family is spread across the realms, and her BFF is kidnapped by supernatural soldiers. It’s tough being a teenager! She embarks on a series of quests throughout the books, getting caught up with witchcraft, faeries and demons as she saves friends and family, and vanquishes evil along the way. The final instalment, Guardians of the Lost Lands, comes out in November and goes much deeper and darker than the first two – I’m really excited about this one as we find Amber clinging to her sanity as the reader is taken on a whirlwind of emotion and action.
Guardians of the Dead (Book 1)
Guardians of the Sky (Book 2)
Guardians of the Lost Lands (Book 3)
Here’s the blurb for Guardians of the Dead (book 1):
One girl holds the key to an ancient pact that could destroy the world…
When sixteen-year-old Amber Noble’s dreams begin to weave into her reality, she turns to the mysterious Connor for help. His links to the supernatural world uncover a chilling truth about her hometown and a pact that must be re-paid with blood.
As her father alienates her, and the Guardians take her best friend, her true destiny unfolds, and she begins a quest that will see her past collide with her present.
Drawn deeper into the world of witchcraft and faeries, it is only at the end of her journey that she realises how much she could lose.
How long did it take you to write your last book?
For all three books in the trilogy, I used NaNoWriMo to pen the first draft. For anyone who doesn’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, an online competition to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I love this competition as I’m a bit of a deadline freak. I block out chunks of my day in the diary and write consistently. Even my family and friends know that I’m ‘unavailable for comment’ during November!
I only use NaNo to write the first draft – without this, I wouldn’t have anything to work with. It then takes me a couple of months to do the re-writes and edits. Book one was written in nine days; book two took me thirteen days, and the final instalment took me just over twenty days. I’ve already plotted out the next book I want to write for this year.
You're a fast writer!
What’s your favourite genre to read?
When I was a teenager, I would devour my dad’s Wilbur Smith books and steal my mum’s Mills & Boon novels.
Hahaha, I went through the Mills & Boon phase too. I think I read them all in my teens :)
As I hit my twenties, I went through a horror phase and lapped up anything written by James Herbert.
Ooh... I did that too!
At each stage in my life, I seem to have read books that weren’t aimed at the age I was at that time, and never more so than when I reached my mid-thirties and discovered young adult books. It was Maggie Stiefvater who initially hooked me in with her Shiver series which was about werewolves. For as long as I can remember I have had a fascination with the supernatural, mythology, and science-fiction and fantasy, so to discover a vast array of books on these very topics was delightful. The coming of age element is easy to read, and as I have a Peter Pan complex, it helps me to keep my teenage mind alive inside the forty-four-year-old body!
LOL I'm like that too. I like a good fantasy book. They're great for the imagination, I think :)
Young adult books don’t waffle. You are thrown straight into the action and tend to be swept along at breakneck speed. There is normally plenty of action, some PG snogging, and the good guy always wins. As ‘real life’ frightens the hell out of me, I’m quite thankful that I can escape into an alternate reality.
The passion I have for reading YA fantasy highlighted the need to write my own teenage books. Its development over the years is exciting, and I look forward to seeing what happens next for this genre.
Who does your cover design? Is there anyone you’d recommend?
Twitter is a wonderful place to meet people from the writing community and it’s thanks to this social media platform that I met my publishing partner, Blue Harvest Creative. I call them ‘publishing partner’ because they do so much more than just design my covers. These guys are fabulous to work with, taking your synopsis and turning it into a living and breathing product – I adore my YA covers and have received so many compliments about them – I can’t wait to see what book three will look like in November.
BHC not only create award winning cover designs but they also produce enchanting chapter headers for the interior, taking the theme of your book right the way through. BHC also provide Facebook and Twitter banners for your book launch, a full formatting service, and they can provide merchandising such as bookmarks and mugs, etc. They are hugely supportive of independent authors and have a dedicated author site. BHC is a full-service company who I would highly recommend – http://www.bhcauthors.com/
What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?
I wrote a blog post dedicated to this particular question a while ago – it’s one of my most popular posts. I’m fortunate to have three amazing young adults under my roof; my eldest son is 18, middle son is 15, and my daughter is 14. It’s certainly come in handy when I needed to ask a YA related question! However, being a teenager, and especially a 16-year-old in this day and age is a tough job. We didn’t have the lure of social media twenty-four-seven when I was 16, in fact, we only had five television channels and if you needed to call your mum for a lift then you’d have to use the big red phone box on the corner of the street!
LOL It's amazing how fast technology has advanced, isn't it?
I offer my daughter plenty of advice on a daily basis. Some of it she accepts with grace, but most of it only gets me an eye-roll. One piece of advice I do repeat often – and this is something I wish someone had told me when I was younger – is to be yourself! Don’t let anyone force you into doing something you don’t want to do, or be someone you don’t want to be.
That is excellent advice
It’s far too easy for teenagers to be swayed by the group (more so for girls I think) but staying true to who you are is the best strategy. I love the quote, ‘In a world of Kardashians, be a Helena Bonham Carter.’
What social media sites can you most often be found on?
Too many! I love social media. As a fairly sociable character, it gives me endless opportunities to meet new people, chat with old friends, and talk about topics that interest me with like-minded people. The writing and blogging community is fantastic, especially as I don’t have any other writer friends in my local area. There’s only so much ‘book talk’ my kids will put up with!
LOL
I’m incredibly active on Twitter where I’ve made some wonderful friends. On Facebook, I have three pages - one is personal, one is for my motivational blog (facebook.com/resolutionchallenge), and the other is my YA Fantasy Author page (facebook.com/FantasyAuthorSLWilson). I love the YA page as my followers are really interactive, and we have a lot of fun. I spend equal amounts of time on Twitter and Facebook as they provide my highest referrals to my blog and Amazon pages.
I love Pinterest, but don’t use it for business yet. I tend to create a board for every new book I write and pin all my character and scene inspiration to it. It’s nice to share this with my YA audience when I’m getting ready to launch a book.
I’ve recently joined Instagram to try and engage with my YA audience, but I got sidetracked by the incredible book bloggers and the gorgeous images they post! I need to sort my account out and stop drooling over all the ‘shelfies’.
I think I'm one of the only people who hasn't joined Instagram yet... it's on my to-do list
My kids have banned me from using Snapchat, but Terry Tyler told me that this is the place to be for my target audience – I wonder if I could sneak on without my kids knowing?
Hahaha!
I’ve also looking into Tumblr but can’t quite get my head around it. I do have a LinkedIn account but rarely look at it.
Not sure if it’s classed as a social media site but I do enjoy popping on Goodreads and joining in with some of the discussions. I’ve found tons of great books on this site.
If you could invite 3 writers (past or present) to dinner, who would you invite and what would you cook?
I love this question! I’ve had to write a list and then methodically cut people until I’m left with my final three – I clearly have far too much time on my hands! Firsts off I would have to invite J.K.Rowling; as a single mum and lover of magic, I think the two of us would have a lot to talk about. Then I’d ask Joss Whedon to attend so I can try and convince him to write another Vampire Slayer television series. Finally, I would invite the late James Herbert so I could find out all his horror writing tricks. What would I cook? Hmm, could be tricky as my pièce de résistance is probably fish fingers, chips, and beans. I’d probably order pizza for delivery – more time to chat if I’m not stuck in the kitchen!
Thank you so much for letting me join you on your blog, Maria, it’s been great fun.
Thanks for being a fabulous guest, Shelley. I'm looking forward to reading your books.
Author links:
Website: http://www.shelleywilsonauthor.co.uk
Blog: http://www.shelleywilsonauthor.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ShelleyWilson72
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FantasyAuthor...
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/resolutioncha...
Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/singlemum101/
Amazon: http://www.amaon.co.uk/Shelley-Wilson...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorslwil...
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Goodreads YA: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
INTERVIEW WITH SHELLEY WILSON
Welcome to my blog, Shelley! Thank you for joining me. Please introduce yourself.
Hi Maria, thank you so much for inviting me over for a chat. My name is Shelley Wilson, and I live in Solihull in the West Midlands with my three teenage children, a fat fish, and a loopy black cat called Luna.
Hahaha!
I write non-fiction for adults in the self-help and personal development genre as well as young adult fantasy fiction - I’m like the Jekyll and Hyde of the book world! My background is in Holistic Health, so the self-help books are a bit like my day job role. Writing my young adult books is pure self-satisfaction. I might be in my mid-forties, but I’m a huge YA fan.
Tell us about your latest book.
Just recently, my non-fiction book has been getting a lot of airtime. I was incredibly fortunate to appear in the June issue of Writers’ Forum Magazine, and around the same time, I hit the number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list for self-help and women’s fiction. All of this is fabulous news, but it also means that my poor fiction books get overlooked. So, to put this right, I’m going to share my YA news with your readers.
My Guardian Series is a fantasy trilogy based around the protagonist, Amber Noble. She is a sixteen-year-old Oracle, who has a ton of special powers thrust upon her and struggles to cope. She never believed in magic, so it’s all a bit much for her to accept. Her family is spread across the realms, and her BFF is kidnapped by supernatural soldiers. It’s tough being a teenager! She embarks on a series of quests throughout the books, getting caught up with witchcraft, faeries and demons as she saves friends and family, and vanquishes evil along the way. The final instalment, Guardians of the Lost Lands, comes out in November and goes much deeper and darker than the first two – I’m really excited about this one as we find Amber clinging to her sanity as the reader is taken on a whirlwind of emotion and action.
Guardians of the Dead (Book 1)
Guardians of the Sky (Book 2)
Guardians of the Lost Lands (Book 3)
Here’s the blurb for Guardians of the Dead (book 1):
One girl holds the key to an ancient pact that could destroy the world…
When sixteen-year-old Amber Noble’s dreams begin to weave into her reality, she turns to the mysterious Connor for help. His links to the supernatural world uncover a chilling truth about her hometown and a pact that must be re-paid with blood.
As her father alienates her, and the Guardians take her best friend, her true destiny unfolds, and she begins a quest that will see her past collide with her present.
Drawn deeper into the world of witchcraft and faeries, it is only at the end of her journey that she realises how much she could lose.
How long did it take you to write your last book?
For all three books in the trilogy, I used NaNoWriMo to pen the first draft. For anyone who doesn’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, an online competition to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I love this competition as I’m a bit of a deadline freak. I block out chunks of my day in the diary and write consistently. Even my family and friends know that I’m ‘unavailable for comment’ during November!
I only use NaNo to write the first draft – without this, I wouldn’t have anything to work with. It then takes me a couple of months to do the re-writes and edits. Book one was written in nine days; book two took me thirteen days, and the final instalment took me just over twenty days. I’ve already plotted out the next book I want to write for this year.
You're a fast writer!
What’s your favourite genre to read?
When I was a teenager, I would devour my dad’s Wilbur Smith books and steal my mum’s Mills & Boon novels.
Hahaha, I went through the Mills & Boon phase too. I think I read them all in my teens :)
As I hit my twenties, I went through a horror phase and lapped up anything written by James Herbert.
Ooh... I did that too!
At each stage in my life, I seem to have read books that weren’t aimed at the age I was at that time, and never more so than when I reached my mid-thirties and discovered young adult books. It was Maggie Stiefvater who initially hooked me in with her Shiver series which was about werewolves. For as long as I can remember I have had a fascination with the supernatural, mythology, and science-fiction and fantasy, so to discover a vast array of books on these very topics was delightful. The coming of age element is easy to read, and as I have a Peter Pan complex, it helps me to keep my teenage mind alive inside the forty-four-year-old body!
LOL I'm like that too. I like a good fantasy book. They're great for the imagination, I think :)
Young adult books don’t waffle. You are thrown straight into the action and tend to be swept along at breakneck speed. There is normally plenty of action, some PG snogging, and the good guy always wins. As ‘real life’ frightens the hell out of me, I’m quite thankful that I can escape into an alternate reality.
The passion I have for reading YA fantasy highlighted the need to write my own teenage books. Its development over the years is exciting, and I look forward to seeing what happens next for this genre.
Who does your cover design? Is there anyone you’d recommend?
Twitter is a wonderful place to meet people from the writing community and it’s thanks to this social media platform that I met my publishing partner, Blue Harvest Creative. I call them ‘publishing partner’ because they do so much more than just design my covers. These guys are fabulous to work with, taking your synopsis and turning it into a living and breathing product – I adore my YA covers and have received so many compliments about them – I can’t wait to see what book three will look like in November.
BHC not only create award winning cover designs but they also produce enchanting chapter headers for the interior, taking the theme of your book right the way through. BHC also provide Facebook and Twitter banners for your book launch, a full formatting service, and they can provide merchandising such as bookmarks and mugs, etc. They are hugely supportive of independent authors and have a dedicated author site. BHC is a full-service company who I would highly recommend – http://www.bhcauthors.com/
What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?
I wrote a blog post dedicated to this particular question a while ago – it’s one of my most popular posts. I’m fortunate to have three amazing young adults under my roof; my eldest son is 18, middle son is 15, and my daughter is 14. It’s certainly come in handy when I needed to ask a YA related question! However, being a teenager, and especially a 16-year-old in this day and age is a tough job. We didn’t have the lure of social media twenty-four-seven when I was 16, in fact, we only had five television channels and if you needed to call your mum for a lift then you’d have to use the big red phone box on the corner of the street!
LOL It's amazing how fast technology has advanced, isn't it?
I offer my daughter plenty of advice on a daily basis. Some of it she accepts with grace, but most of it only gets me an eye-roll. One piece of advice I do repeat often – and this is something I wish someone had told me when I was younger – is to be yourself! Don’t let anyone force you into doing something you don’t want to do, or be someone you don’t want to be.
That is excellent advice
It’s far too easy for teenagers to be swayed by the group (more so for girls I think) but staying true to who you are is the best strategy. I love the quote, ‘In a world of Kardashians, be a Helena Bonham Carter.’
What social media sites can you most often be found on?
Too many! I love social media. As a fairly sociable character, it gives me endless opportunities to meet new people, chat with old friends, and talk about topics that interest me with like-minded people. The writing and blogging community is fantastic, especially as I don’t have any other writer friends in my local area. There’s only so much ‘book talk’ my kids will put up with!
LOL
I’m incredibly active on Twitter where I’ve made some wonderful friends. On Facebook, I have three pages - one is personal, one is for my motivational blog (facebook.com/resolutionchallenge), and the other is my YA Fantasy Author page (facebook.com/FantasyAuthorSLWilson). I love the YA page as my followers are really interactive, and we have a lot of fun. I spend equal amounts of time on Twitter and Facebook as they provide my highest referrals to my blog and Amazon pages.
I love Pinterest, but don’t use it for business yet. I tend to create a board for every new book I write and pin all my character and scene inspiration to it. It’s nice to share this with my YA audience when I’m getting ready to launch a book.
I’ve recently joined Instagram to try and engage with my YA audience, but I got sidetracked by the incredible book bloggers and the gorgeous images they post! I need to sort my account out and stop drooling over all the ‘shelfies’.
I think I'm one of the only people who hasn't joined Instagram yet... it's on my to-do list
My kids have banned me from using Snapchat, but Terry Tyler told me that this is the place to be for my target audience – I wonder if I could sneak on without my kids knowing?
Hahaha!
I’ve also looking into Tumblr but can’t quite get my head around it. I do have a LinkedIn account but rarely look at it.
Not sure if it’s classed as a social media site but I do enjoy popping on Goodreads and joining in with some of the discussions. I’ve found tons of great books on this site.
If you could invite 3 writers (past or present) to dinner, who would you invite and what would you cook?
I love this question! I’ve had to write a list and then methodically cut people until I’m left with my final three – I clearly have far too much time on my hands! Firsts off I would have to invite J.K.Rowling; as a single mum and lover of magic, I think the two of us would have a lot to talk about. Then I’d ask Joss Whedon to attend so I can try and convince him to write another Vampire Slayer television series. Finally, I would invite the late James Herbert so I could find out all his horror writing tricks. What would I cook? Hmm, could be tricky as my pièce de résistance is probably fish fingers, chips, and beans. I’d probably order pizza for delivery – more time to chat if I’m not stuck in the kitchen!
Thank you so much for letting me join you on your blog, Maria, it’s been great fun.
Thanks for being a fabulous guest, Shelley. I'm looking forward to reading your books.
Author links:
Website: http://www.shelleywilsonauthor.co.uk
Blog: http://www.shelleywilsonauthor.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ShelleyWilson72
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FantasyAuthor...
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/resolutioncha...
Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/singlemum101/
Amazon: http://www.amaon.co.uk/Shelley-Wilson...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorslwil...
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Goodreads YA: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Book Review: Forever Freaky, by Tom Upton
Forever Freaky by Tom UptonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love Tom Upton's writing style and quirky characters. Julia (Jules) is known as a freak because of her paranormal abilities. In these two entertaining short novellas, we follow her on a journey of self-discovery. The teenager struggles to come to terms with her own powers and how they affect the world around her. There is intrigue, danger, adventure, and a lot of imagination in these two stories.
In the first tale, a girl disappears at Jules' school and she is called on to use her special abilities to find the girl before it's too late. In the second story, Jules is again coerced into assisting with something she is initially reluctant to do; High School athletes are bursting into flames and no one knows why. Can Freaky Jules get to the bottom of it? Joining her in her adventures is a boy called Jack, who has an interest in all things paranormal and is also hoping to win Jules' heart.
Forever Freaky contains many interesting and realistic characters. These fun fantasy/paranormal tales come across as quite believable even though there are many strange things going on, which shows how skilled this writer is. I was drawn into the stories and enjoyed every page. I will definitely be looking out for more of this author's books.
View all my reviews
