The Fallen Stars Book Tour

Today I'm featuring The Fallen Stars by Stephanie Keyes. Check it out! There's even a giveaway you can enter for some cool swag!

The Fallen Stars (The Star Child #2)

by Stephanie Keyes

Paperback, 530 pages| Expected publication: April 12th 2013 by Inkspell Publishing

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Book Depository | Trailer | Add to Goodreads

When all is lost, he will have to make the ultimate decision.

Kellen St. James was just your average seventeen-year-old prodigy, until he eighty-sixed the Lord of Faerie and proposed to the Celtic Goddess, Calienta. But then everything in Kellen’s life gets turned upside-down when he and Cali end up on the run from a seriously irritated group of faeries. The worst part? They have zero idea why they’re being hunted.

Suddenly, Kellen is stuck in the middle of another prophecy that foresees him turning away from Calienta and embracing the dark. He’ll be forced to take sides in a struggle to claim his birthright, while discovering secrets about his father’s past. Meanwhile, his passion for Cali grows stronger, even as the prophecy threatens to tear them apart.

In the end, will Kellen and Cali survive the fates? When the ultimate power is within reach, which side will he choose?

Also available: The Star Child (The Star Child, Book #1)

Playlist

Song: Into the Fire (Acoustic)
Artist: Thirteen Senses
Inspired: Kellen learns that Calienta has been keeping secrets from him - one big secret that could put him in danger. Calienta searches the Stewart home to find Kellen and apologize. This new version of their original theme song seems to suit the moment well. The video is a fan-made one, but the audio quality is great and so are some of the band pics.

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow the Tour

Want to know where the tour is heading next? Check out the entire schedule here! Click to view the schedule.

About the Author

Stephanie Keyes has been addicted to Fantasy since she discovered T.H. White as a child and started drumming up incredible journeys in her head. When she's not writing, Stephanie is also a graphic designer, international speaker, teacher, musician, avid reader, and Mom to two little boys who constantly keep her on her toes. In addition, she's best friend to her incredible husband of eleven years.
Keyes is the author of the YA Fantasy series, The Star Child, which currently includes The Star Child (September 2012) and The Fallen Stars (April 2013), both released by Inkspell Publishing. She is currently hard at work on the third book in the trilogy, The Star Catcher. (Author photo courtesy of Kristina Serafini Photography)
Follow @StephanieKeyes

Culture Shock Book Tour

CULTURE SHOCK is a witty tale of mystery and romance with a large helping of southern hospitality.

Macy Holmes is a seventeen-year-old socially-isolated introvert since her best friend's death a year ago. When her family decides to move from Manhattan to the quaint country town of Bougainvillea, Florida, Macy finds she's in a completely different world. Macy is no longer the outsider hiding behind designer clothes when she is sought out by three strange students, one of whom she is particularly interested in. The more time she spends with Chad the more things don't add up. When his true identity is finally revealed, Macy is pulled into a supernatural society with its saturation of inhabitants residing in Bougainvillea.

You would think she has enough on her plate, but no, then her dreams become infiltrated by an external magical force, Macy and her band of supernatural misfits must find the culprit behind the magic-induced nightmares. They must dodge zombie assassins, shifty shape-shifters and high school bullies in order to stop this perpetrator before Macy, her friends or her parents pay the ultimate price. Especially when Macy has the sneaking suspicion that these dreams are reality...

GR Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17335385-culture-shock

About the Author

After finishing her degree in Sociology from the University of Florida, Jeanette Pekala had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.

While her husband was deployed overseas, she focused on what she loved to do, write, where she has finally found an outlet for her overactive imagination.

 She lives a not so normal life just a wee bit north of Bougainvillea where she resides with her husband and two children working on Shock Wave, book 2 in the Culture Shock Series.

Buy Links

Amazon ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Shock-Series-ebook/dp/B00BVMAF6K/

Amazon Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Shock-Series-Volume/dp/0989158411/

Createspace Paperback: https://www.createspace.com/4205224

Barnes & Noble (Nook) Link: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-shock-jeanette-pekala/1114839472?ean=2940016355870

Nook ebook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-shock-jeanette-pekala/1114839472?ean=2940016355870https://www.createspace.com/4205224

Contact Links

Email: jdpekala@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeanettePekalaAuthor

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomlifeandliterature

Blog: http://adventuresoflifeandliterature.blogspot.com/

Website: http://jeanettepekala.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeanettePekala

Cover Reveal: Disintegrate by Christine Klocek-Lim

While I'm busy editing the crap out of my book, Evernight Teen is going ahead full speed, and their next release is from the uber-talented, multi-published author, Christine Klocek-Lim, whose novel is being released on April 19th. And I'm so happy to be unveiling her cover here for your viewing pleasure!

Emily just wanted a normal life: a boyfriend, college, two parents who loved her. Instead, her dad disappeared when she was fourteen and her life at college is anything but ordinary.

When you can manipulate matter like putty and you have no idea why, how do you pretend to be like everyone else? What happens when you meet a guy who has the same powers? Do you trust him to help you find the answers you need?

Emily desperately wants to believe that Jax can help, but the stakes grow higher than she’d ever expected: someone is after them and they’re not afraid to use violence to get what they want.

—————

Christine Klocek-Lim spends most of her time daydreaming—which isn't much different from what she did as a girl in northeast Pennsylvania, as a college student in Pittsburgh, as a twenty-something technical writer in New York City, and as a young mother in suburban New Jersey. For the past decade or so she's been dream-surfing in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania.

She's published a pile of romance novels, a few poetry chapbooks, and a bunch of short stories.

website: christinekloceklim.com

twitter: @chrissiemkl

facebook: www.facebook.com/christine.kloceklim

Editing Sucks

I thought I'd surface from the sea of editing to do a bit of blogging. Just for a change of pace! (I'm not procrastinating. Blogging is important too!)

So it turns out writing 300 pages is easy. Okay, not easy, but it's just the first step. I am a weird combination of a plotter and pantser. For those unaware, a plotter is a writer who outlines their book down to the tiniest little detail. Like what flavour cake their main character ate at his third birthday party. I read a book on outlining by a woman who takes an average of 3 months to outline her book.

3 months to outline? I wrote my entire book in a month.

Of course, perhaps that's why I'm now having to edit the crap out of it. But I digress. Where was I? Right - pantser. A pantser is a writer who starts with a nugget of an idea (What would happen if witches wanted to turn all the children in the world into mice? Thanks Mr. Dahl!) and then just starts writing, letting the words go where they will, giving a big middle finger to outlines and plans in general. The problem pantsers often have is writing themselves into a corner.

My personal approach, and one that I think a lot of writers use, is to do a rough outline. I'll name my characters and write physical descriptions of them along with some major personality traits. Then I take my "what if" and plan a series of events to get me from the beginning to the end. So I'm somewhere between the two extremes. I'm a plotster. Or is that a planter? Whatever.

I tend to edit as I go along. If I think of something as I'm typing, I'll go back and change it right away. And I hate those squiggly red, green and blue lines under the words in Word. They taunt me until I go back and fix the spelling or grammar or whatever. After my book was rejected by Harper Voyager, I revised and edited it again before submitting to Evernight. Now I'm faced with the daunting task of "ripping down and revisioning" my book and it's hard! *stamps foot, pouts, and crosses arms* I have had to readjust my premise, outline a new plot, change the timeline, rename the characters...it goes on and on! I may even have to change the title of the book. Arrrggghhh!

Anyway, just wanted to share my pain. I'm making headway. The long weekend gave me a good opportunity to dig into the story and I've already written 11, 000 words of new material. I've cut a good deal of the old stuff, and I've expanded some of it. And I need to do more, so I'll sign off now and get to it.

Books Are Like Salad in a Bag

image from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Picture this scenario: You want a salad, but you're too lazy tired busy to chop everything and put it together. What's the answer? Salad in a bag!

I love salad in a bag. It's the easiest thing in the world to prepare. Open bag. Dump in bowl. Add dressing. Eat!

If you're anything like me, you always have the best intentions. You see the salad, you buy it because it's easy, take it home, put it in the fridge, and forget about it. Then a few days later, you move a container of sour cream and discover the bag of salad again. You take it out and dump it in a bowl, but you notice that a few pieces have gone really brown and gross around the edges. So you start to pick them out. As you do, you notice more and more pieces that have gone bad. Soon, the pile of bad lettuce starts to outgrow the pile of good lettuce, until you get to the point where you wonder if there's anything good left in there at all or if you should just chuck the lot of it.

Turns out the same thing happens with books.

I got the edits back for my book today. Here's a picture of my editor.

From author Jon Keegan's Blog

I know it's the editor's job to pick apart a manuscript and help the author make their book even better, but I'm beginning to feel like my book is the salad in the bag. There is so much that needs to be chopped, it's sorely tempting to just toss it all.

It's irritating and frustrating. But in the end, the salad book will be better because all the gross, bad parts are gone. And just when I thought I was making Caesar salad, it may end up being a tossed salad. The finished product is going to be very different from what I originally envisioned. And also from what I've already shared with you!

So this Sunday, there will be no snippet. In fact, the snippets from the previous weeks will probably not make it into the final product. And in the meantime, be prepared to find me tired, cranky, and with considerably less hair than before.

Sunday's Seven Sentence Snippet #3

Today's snippet is a little different. It is written from the point of view of "The Bad Guy".

With a sigh, he flipped to the next paper. X5. He had reported early that morning because he thought it was important. That was out of the ordinary. X5 was one they usually had to track down for his polygraphs. But at seventeen the subject wouldn’t be in the regular program much longer. He’d be moved into the Reproductive Program where he could prove his worth by fathering as many Gifted little brats as he could.

The bad guy's name is Slater. He's the head of operations at the Bunker. Subjects in the regular program at the Bunker have to take a polygraph every day to tell about any visions they've had. The regular program is made up of kids age 12 - 18. At 18 they get moved into the reproductive program with a pre-chosen mate so they can produce more Gifted children. Basically, they're kept like rabbits.

Image from www.freedigitalphotos.net

In this book we don't hear much about the reproductive program, but in book 2 this is explored in greater detail. I've started working on the second book and my goal is to have it finished by June, so I can get to work on the third and final book! 

Sunday's Seven Sentence Snippet #2

Here is today's snippet!

It didn’t tell how we were forced to remain in a Government Bunker, living like rats in a cage, breeding on demand and occasionally getting killed off for outliving our usefulness. Not that I’m bitter. Really, I’m not. We are well fed, clothed, and educated. We have the opportunity to go out in the sun for regular exercise and are allowed to socialize with each other. We even get to watch videos or play computer games sometimes. But as I looked at a photo of a small family clinging to each other in the Shelters I couldn’t help feeling that something was missing from our lives here.

By Ykmyks (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In today's snippet, X5 is reflecting on life in the Bunker and he compares the Gifted to rats in a cage. The children who live at the Bunker are all there because they have specific psychic gifts, usually the ability to have visions of the future, though there are others. Though the Gifted have been told the Bunker is run by the government, the truth is that it is controlled by a very secretive group called The Consortium. 

In order to ensure a good supply of subjects, the Consortium has a strict Reproductive Program. Subjects are matched based on their genetics and the likelihood of producing offspring who have inherited those traits. And once the offspring are produced, they are taken from their parents to be raised by the workers at the Bunker. 

So while the Gifted have their physical needs met and are kept in comfort, they have never been outside the Bunker, just as rats are kept in their cages. But although he can't yet identify what is missing, X5 has always had the nagging suspicion that he needs something more. The longing for that something more is part of what drives him to do the things he does throughout the book.