Amy Joy's Blog

There are still a few more weeks of summer left, and to celebrate, CN James & I are running another GoodReads giveway! This time we’re giving away two free copies of our new release, The Ghostlands, Part 1: Erie Energy. This giveaway won’t last long, so head on over to GoodReads now to enter to win your copy!

Goodreads Book Giveaway


The Ghostlands, Part 1
by CN James

Giveaway ends August 18, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

It’s been more work than I can easily describe (how much time do you have?), but The Ghostlands is now in print! You can find it now on Amazon, and in the weeks to come it will arrive on Barnes&Noble.com and many, many more online booksellers.

Here are a few pictures that will offer a sneak peek of how the print turned out.

Enjoy!

Amy Joy

Get it in print: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.in | Amazon.mx (coming soon to Barnes&Noble.com & more)

Print ISBN-10: 1515311872 ISBN-13: 978-1515311874

 

Hello everyone! I just wanted to post a quick note to let you know that for a very limited time, we’re running a Goodreads Giveaway for The Academie. If you haven’t read it yet and would like to get your hands on a copy, head on over to Goodreads.com and enter the drawing pool. You never know, you might just win.

Good luck!

Goodreads Book Giveaway


The Academie
by Amy Joy

Giveaway ends August 06, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

I was a little apprehensive the first time I went to a comic con. I didn’t know what to expect. Would I be the only one not in costume? (I didn’t even wear my Superman graphic tee-shirt.) Would I get to see any of the listed celebrities? Would there be time to see everything? Would my wife, who came with me, think less of me somehow? Would I have enough money? Food? Water? Would I survive? It turns out I had nothing to worry about. That was four years ago at a Wizard World Convention in Columbus, Ohio; and my wife and I have beenRead More →

I couldn’t be more excited. Recently, Amy Joy and I attended our second convention as vendors and it was a huge success! And on top of that our newest novel, The Ghostlands: Part 1 has gotten nothing but positive feedback. We have our first star-rating on Goodreads.com (5 out of 5), and at the convention, everyone who read one of our free samples came back wanting a copy of the book. Anyway, just thought I’d share the good news. . . In other news: The Ghostlands: Part 2 has been written, and we are in the revising stage now. Look for it later this year.Read More →

Everyone says the ghosts can’t get into the city. But Anastasia knows better. She sees them in the alleyways, the gardens, and once, inside her very own bedroom. They follow her along the edges of the Avertronic barrier that protects the city, their mouths moving like they are trying to speak, but never finding the words. She can’t understand how it is that her father and brother can travel out into the ghostlands each and every day, knowing they may never return.

She tries to console herself that at least her boyfriend is safe, but she hasn’t heard from him in the two long years since his mother got sick and his family was traded to another city. And her concerns about him and her ever-declining Name Value are becoming more than she can bear. Pushed around at school, misunderstood at home, and tracked into a sales career despite her struggles with what her doctor calls “chronic introversion,” Anastasia’s collapsing under the pressure.

But her brother says he has answers. And while she’s never felt compelled to trust him before, this time she finds it impossible to refuse. But to do so she’ll have to venture outside the safety of the city of Erie Energy and into haunted wasteland known as the ghostlands.

The Ghostlands is a two book, young adult scifi romance co-authored with CN James. Part 1 was just released June 16, 2015, and Part 2 will be released in late 2015.

Add it to your GoodReads reading list: The Ghostlands

Now available! eBook: $3.99 Only $2.99 for a limited time!

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | iTunes | Barnes&Noble | Kobo |and many more

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching! Curl up with a good romance today. Already finished reading The Academie? Why not pass it on to a friend?

High school was a difficult time for me. I truly believed (and still do) that I was mature enough to be given much more freedom and responsibility than adults were willing to offer me. Even when I went off to college, I was discouraged to find that I often needed a parent’s signature to get things done. (“Seriously? I thought I was adult at 18?”) Moreover, as a petite woman who continued to look like a teen long after I wasn’t, I was constantly reminded of how badly young people can be treated long after most people my age had forgotten. As for high school, I still have trouble walking back in those doors for any reason. It’s scary during the day, and even more frightening after dark. To this day my high school still has large, spear-headed metal gates they pull across the halls at night. No joke. I was always terrified of being locked behind one and trapped inside there forever. And that’s how the story of The Academie came to be: because sometimes I still have nightmares that I haven’t left, that I’m trapped inside high school–forever. What about you? Are/were you one of those people who had an amazing high school experience and would love to go back, or do you believe life really does get better after high school? Does/did your high school had the speared gates?

I read this in fifth grade and found it at my mom's house recently when I was pulling out books for my eleven-year-old niece. Unfortunately, she wasn't interested, so I brought the book home with me to read again. Should be fun after all these years.

UPDATE: (3 years later...)

I just finished my first reading of this since grade school. As I went along, I found the page I left dogeared about halfway through from the first time I tried to read it all those years ago. I'm happy I finished it this time, though I can see why I wasn't able to finish it as a kid. As a writer I can see how it's written more from the perspective of an adult remembering what it was like to be a child rather than from a child's perspective, so I connected with it more now than I could as a child. There was one part toward the end that I found quite unexpected and scary, so if you're looking for a book for your middle grade child, reader beware. The book wasn't what I expected, but a fun read overall.

Usually religious arguments don’t include a clown on stilts, but this one did. At least, that’s what I was told. My wife called me on a pleasant October afternoon to tell me about it. At that time, she was finishing her second master’s degree and walking to class when she saw it: a group of people bobbing signs up and down about how the world was about to end, and how everyone needs to repent and be saved. They were in a shouting match with a large group of students who had stopped to watch their parade. And if that wasn’t strange enough, a clownRead More →