Blog Tour: Enmity by E. J. Andrews - Guest Post: Character Profile

I'm happy to have E.J Andrews on the blog with a character profile of Hermia - one of the main POV's (the other being Nate) from her novel Enmity. 

If you would like a chance to win a copy, head over to Enmity's Goodreads page and enter (Aus and NZ residents only).  

If you'd like to follow the rest of the Blog Tour click here.

 Character Profile- Hermia

Name: Hermia

Meaning of Name: The meaning of Hermia is ‘Messenger’

Reason for Name: Hermia’s mother named her so because she saw her own self in the character of Hermia from Shakespeare’s – A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Nickname: Mia (Hermia hates this nickname and gets agitated when others call her by that name. It was a pet name her uncle and grandparents were fond of calling her, whom she is now estranged from.)

Age: 16

Height: 157cm

Gender: Female

Hair: Brown/Dark Brown, Wavy Curls, Mid Back Length

Eye Colour: Hazel

Relationship Status: It’s complicated with Chase

Personality: Detached, cold, resentful

Strengths: Exceptional aim with her badass crossbow

Flaws: Highly emotional, doesn’t like to cooperate with others, headstrong

Ambitions: Stay alive and give everyone hell whilst she can

Biggest fear: Hermia isn’t afraid of much at all but she is terrified of losing herself. She never wants to be defined by someone else, like a guy or a relationship

Occupation: Formerly cleaner / make-up artist at Elaine’s Gentleman’s Club

About the Book

Title: Enmity
Author: E. J. Andrews
Publisher: Harlequin Australia
Expected Publication Date: April 1st, 2014
Series: Enmity #1
Genre: Young Adult: Science Fiction, Dystopian 


Love vs Life.
Good vs Evil.
War vs Warfare.

Which would you choose?

After a solar flare wipes out most of the world’s inhabitants, it leaves behind nothing but a desolate earth and a desperate population. Existence is no longer a certainty. And with factions now fighting for the power to rule, people start to become reckless with their lives. The world has become a dangerous place.

Amongst the ensuing chaos, Nate and Hermia — two victims of the new world order — are taken against their will to The Compound. Joined by eight other teenagers all chosen for a specific reason, Nate and Hermia are forced to train as assassins to overthrow the current president and make way for a new leader of the free world. Here, they learn to plan, fight, and most importantly... to survive.

Except, despite the casual cruelty of their new existence, both Nate and Hermia — two very strong but very different people — begin to form fragile bonds within the group. But they soon realize their happiness is short lived...because their training is just the beginning.

A war awaits...regardless of how ready or willing they may be.

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Author Bio

E.J. Andrews was raised in a small town on the west coast of New Zealand by a gold miner with a fascination for guns and a nurse with an obsession with dragons.

Growing up, E.J. constantly felt that she needed to write down the vivid thoughts going around her head, but it wasn’t until her aunt gave her John Marsden’s Tomorrow series to read that her writing bloomed and her interest in books became a full-blown fixation.

At the age of eighteen she decided to live with her sister in Brisbane, Australia, where she found a job working at a boat club on the beautiful Moreton Bay. In between split shifts and while others her age were out enjoying their adolescence, E.J. was writing well into the early hours, trying to get down those ever-present ideas of a not-so-bright future. 

E.J. now lives on the Redcliffe peninsula with her partner and their cat Senga.

Blog Tour: Guest Post by Carissa Andrews, author of Pendomus

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Guest Post

THE MANY BOOK LOOKS OF PENDOMUS

When I started writing Pendomus, I would occasionally get stuck. (Say it isn’t so!) When that was the case, I’d lean on my background in communication art (aka Graphic Design) to “sketch out” covers for the book.

It’s been three years since Pendomus first landed in my brain, so bear with some of the thumbnails. Not only has my writing grown with me, so has my visual art. As you may also guess, the book’s title has gone through a few different incarnations, too. ;)

What do you think? Can you see the evolution of the final cover buried in the older thumbnails?

Title: Pendomus 

Author: Carissa Andrews 

Series: Pendomus Chronicles, Book #1 

Publication date: October 10th, 2013 

Genres: Young Adult, Dystopia, Fantasy, Science Fiction

Synopsis:

Humanity has colonized on a tidally locked planet known as Pendomus, a planet of extremes. Half eternal scorching desert and half perpetual arctic night. Surviving along the temperate band between the two, we’ve set up home in a complex known as the Helix. Within the Helix lies a highly sophisticated, highly technological society functioning solely on humans fulfilling their life’s purpose. That purpose is determined and nurtured through a person’s natural aptitudes, as read by their daily brain scans. Eating, sleeping, even procreation is handled by professionals. These basic concepts, no longer a part of society’s every day norm.

Seventeen-year-old Runa Cophem longs to be more than part of the Helix machine. Her life inside is anything but fulfilling. She feels disconnected, and longs to be more than society dictates. Inside, no one socializes, no one interacts in a meaningful way. It’s never set right with Runa. She would love nothing more than to reach out to her family, but not even her own mother can show any semblance of love for her. Instead, Runa has found solace in the ancient woods nearby, despite being strictly forbidden.

Runa’s life takes an unforeseen turn when she’s brutally attacked, and left for dead in those woods near the Helix. Rescued by a stranger with blue hair, she’s immersed into a surprising way humanity has survived. Fueled by a yearning to belong, and an attraction she didn’t even know was possible, Runa wants desperately to make a new life. Yet, there’s much she doesn’t know about herself, about the planet and the forces controlling her from afar.

What she needs is some answers.

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Author Bio

Born and raised in central MN, Carissa Andrews has always loved books. She started her career at 15 in a bookstore, just to be able to afford her book fetish. By 19, she worked for a magazine publisher. At 22, she was working for printers to learn their trade. At 27, she went back to school for graphic design, and became an award winning designer. Little did she know all of her experiences would lead her to becoming a self-publishing power house.

At 31, a magical world on a planet far away, invaded her mind.

At 34, she’s learned what she needs to make her work successful.

Pendomus (Book 1 of the Pendomus Chronicles) will be released OCTOBER 10, 2013.

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Giveaway

Grand prize giveaway

Prizes:

-Perfumes and aquamarine stones (related to the book) - US/CAN only

-3 Amazon gift cards (2 x 10$ and 1 x 25$) - INTL

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Blast and Guest Post‏: Leopard Moon by Jeanette Battista

To help spread the word about the fact that Jeanette Battista's LEOPARD MOON, the first book in the Moon series, is available for free at Amazon for the Kindle until the end of the month we've invited the author to the blog to share a guest post about her experience writing the book.

Title: LEOPARD MOON (Moon Series #1)

Author: Jeanette Battista

Publisher: CreateSpace

Release date: March 7, 2012

Pages: 204

Formats: Paperback, eBook

Description

How do you disappear when you come from a family of predators?

A wereleopard, Kess is forced to flee her home and family in Miami once her brother's obsession with her turns violent. She runs from city to city, trying to stay one step ahead of the investigators her family has dispatched to bring her home. Kess ends up in the mountains of North Carolina and attracts the attention of Cormac, a young man with a secret of his own. As she attempts to live as normal a life as her were-nature allows, her brother Sek continues to hunt for her. He believes she is the key to revitalizing their weakened clan and is driven to extreme measures to ensure their continued existence. As Kess' relationship with Cormac deepens, Sek closes in, threatening Cormac's life and Kess' freedom.

When the moon rises, the hunt is on….

The Moon series consists of four books - LEOPARD MOON, JACKAL MOON, HYENA MOON and HUNTER MOON - and is a series author Melissa Marr says, "... is filled with action and romance, shape shifters and strong heroines."

Book Links

To check out all the books in the series on Goodreads, CLICK HERE. 

***Kindle format free at Amazon - HERE***

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Author Bio

Photo credit: Dimitri Williams Photography

Source: Author’s website

Jeanette Battista graduated with an English degree with a concentration in medieval literature which explains her possibly unhealthy fixation on edged weapons and cathedral architecture. She spent a summer in England and Scotland studying the historical King Arthur, which did nothing to curb her obsession. To satisfy her adrenaline cravings—since sword fighting is not widely accepted in these modern times—she rode a motorcycle at ridiculously high speeds, got some tattoos, and took kickboxing and boxing classes. She gave up the bike when her daughter came along, although she still gets pummeled at the gym on a regular basis.

When she’s not writing or working, Jeanette spends time with family, hikes, reads, makes decadent brownies, buys killer boots, and plays Pocket Frogs. She wishes there were more hours in the day so she could actually do more of these things. She lives with her daughter and their ancient, ill-tempered cat in North Carolina.

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I'll be honest--I wasn't planning to write a book like Leopard Moon. I had an entirely different story in my head at the time, but it just wasn't coming into clear focus. That's the funny way writing works though: there I am, sitting at a red light on my way to meet my friends for a birthday martini and pedicure, listening to Florence + the Machine and WHAM! The song Howl comes on and this whole lovely scene just starts unfolding in my head. There was Kess, running through the woods, ripping off of her clothes as she triggered a change into a black leopard. And there was Cormac, standing in a different part of the woods being beaten mercilessly by the villain. I didn't know Sek was going to turn out to be Kess' brother, but I did know who he was as a character and what he wanted.

It was truly a gift: the entire final fight scene just unspooled itself along with the song lyrics. Each beat of the song matched a key point in the fight. The more I listened, the more I realized that the lyrics could apply to all of the characters in the main triangle at some point in the story I suddenly wanted to tell. And I wanted that story to be more than just boy meeting girl--I wanted that story to be about girl saving boy, but more importantly about girl saving herself. The song Howl gave me Kess first and Sekhmet second, so a lot of what I tried to do with them was to show them as two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin. Howl, at least to me, wasn't a love song at all--it was a song about possession and obsession and all of those things that show up in our animal drives. that we'd like to forget exists.

So when I began to craft Kess and Sek, Howl played on a continuous loop. And though the song speaks of wolves, I knew these two had to be cats. Wolves have a more social nature and are more easily understood by us--I think it comes from them being a a precursor to our beloved dogs. Cats are an unknown quantity, strange and separate, even if they choose to share space with us. I wanted real darkness there, not just a brief bit of danger that would be easily resolved. Obsession and mental illness gave Sek that scariness, but also--I hope--a bit of sympathy. He really does love his sister and wants what is best for her and his clan. I never intended to excuse his behavior, but I did want to try and understand it.

Just like the song made me understand that narrator of that story. I can only hope I did half so well.

***

To meet Kess, Cormac and Sek in this first book in the Moon series, head over to Amazon to download the Kindle eBook for free until January 31st.

It can be found HERE!

Guest Blog & Excerpt: Honeysuckle Love by S. Walden

I'd like to welcome Summer Walden, author of Honeysuckle Love, to the blog today. I hope you all enjoy her post. 

Write However, Whenever. Just Write.

I’ve had people ask me how I write. Well, there’s no correct writing process. Sure, you learn about the Writing Process in school, but it’s a bunch of hooey. Every person (who writes) writes differently, and all forms are acceptable. Now what’s not acceptable is never revising and editing your work. Ugh. Find some critique partners. Find an editor. It doesn’t matter if you’re going it alone as I am or signed with a big publishing house. Make sure you have an editor. And a good one.

My process is usually all over the place. I get an idea for a story, mull it over in my brain, take notes or make a loose (and I mean very loose) outline, and begin. Do I begin at the beginning? Never. I’ve never started a story from the beginning. I always start with whatever scene pops into my head first. But I write fiction. It may prove harder to write this way if I wrote nonfiction. Some might argue that this can mess up the whole character development thing, but I’ve never had that be the case. Sure, I end up changing scenes, sometimes a little, and sometimes altogether. Sometimes I cut them completely. But I always write whatever feels right in that moment. I don’t ever try to go Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and so on.

I’ve run into several dilemmas writing this way. You see, the good thing about writing linearly is that you seldom make mistakes in your plot progression with times, dates, information characters know or don’t know. But when you write all over the place—I like to call it the Chaotic Method—then you tend to run a higher risk of having conflicting information in your story. Take this morning, for instance. I’m in the process of writing my third novel, Going Under. I was writing a scene where a character makes reference to information she hasn’t yet discovered! And that’s because I’ve already written the scene where she discovers it, but the one I worked on this morning comes way earlier in the draft. Whoops. So yeah, that can be an issue. But that’s what your editor is for, right? (She’d love hearing that.)

Here’s the thing about it: I would never again (because I have in the past) give someone instructions on the appropriate way to write. The correct process, if you will. I did that for a few years as a writing teacher, and felt like one huge fraud. It was frustrating for me and frustrating for my students. They thought they had to write a certain way, and I knew better. But my hands were tied—I had to adhere to the curriculum—though that’s no excuse. I should have been subversive in my teaching. It always makes you a better teacher when you’re subversive. Remember that. In any case, I carry a bit of guilt for passing off the five-paragraph essay and Writing Process as the appropriate methods. I’m trying to atone for it now.

So write however you want. Find the process that works best for you. Maybe you are more organized and enjoy writing linearly. It keeps you sane. It keeps your story sensible. It helps you write better. Go for it. Maybe you’re like me and ideas just explode in your brain at random. Before you know it, you’ve got an entire Word document filled with a bunch of unorganized scenes. Then it’s like a puzzle: move this around, that around, until it fits. Whatever works for you, do it. But however you do it, just do it. Keep writing.  

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Title: Honeysuckle Love

Author: S. Walden

Date Published: 19th Nov 2012
Genre: Upper YA Romance - New Adult

Clara Greenwich is too young to take on the sole responsibility of caring for herself

and her younger sister. She’s just sixteen. She should be focused on school, hanging out with friends, falling in love. Instead, she’s working to pay off the mound of bills her mother left behind when she vanished at the start of the school year. Left alone with her ten-year-old sister, Beatrice, Clara discovers that she is now the parent, the provider, and the responsibilities grow to be more than she can handle.

Complicating matters is senior Evan Morningstar who starts pursuing Clara at the beginning of her junior year. She’s confused by this. Evan is a popular, likeable guy.

She describes herself as a nobody—a quiet, intensely shy girl who suffers from social anxiety. She wants love like any teenage girl, but she’s terrified to let Evan get close, to discover her secrets. His gentle persistence eventually wins out, however, and she has no option but to open her heart to him.

When Clara’s responsibilities prove too great, she begins a slow descent into depression, making dangerous choices that threaten her relationships. She can stay trapped in her despair or discover redemption—how to forgive the past and love again.

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Excerpt

(Chapter 6)

The tardy bell drowned out Clara’s laughter as the remaining students hurried into class. She tried to concentrate during the lecture, but it was hard with Evan sitting so close. She wanted him to keep saying silly things to her to make her laugh. She loved feeling the laughter all throughout her body, making her warm and giddy. It made her forget about her troubles. It made her feel special.

She didn’t understand why he chose to sit beside her today. He always sat with his friends on the opposite side of the room. Were they wondering, too, why he chose to hang out with a nobody? She would not get caught up in the ridiculous idea that he liked her. But he did make a point to walk over to her and sit with her in the cafeteria. In front of everyone. And he did say she was pretty. Well, the exact words were, “You’re too pretty to say something so blasphemous.” He couldn’t know that she’d been mulling over those words since the moment he said them. And now he sat beside her in class when he never did that.

He was like the cat they used to have years ago that showed up one day, kept coming around for food but was never pushy about it, and before Clara knew it, the cat was sleeping with her in her bed. The image changed to Evan sleeping with her in her bed, and she jumped in her seat.

“Are you okay?” Evan whispered leaning over close to her.

She nodded, afraid to look at him. She was convinced her eyes would give away her secret thoughts.

Author Bio

Summer Walden used to teach English before making the easy decision to become a full-time writer.

Easy because once she completed a full-time graduate program, there weren't any teaching jobs anyway! She lives in Georgia with her very supportive husband who does not read fiction and has a difficult time understanding why her characters must have personality flaws. She is wary of small children, so she has two Westies instead. Her dreams include getting through her next big writing project (a three-part series) and owning and operating a beachside inn on the Gulf Coast.

Her husband's dreams for her include getting her Ph.D. so that he can tell people he's married to a doctor.

She loves her fans and loves to hear from them. Email her at swaldenauthor@hotmail.com and follow her blog at http://swaldenauthor.blogspot.com where you can get up-to-date information on her current projects.

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