Friday, April 19, 2013

An Insight Of The Characters' World: Guest Post + Giveaway by Liesl Shurtliff

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This is a feature where I ask authors to do a guest post discussing about the world building of their books and share their experiences in creating the world for their characters.For more information on this feature,click HERE.

Today,Liesl Shurtliff stops by at Daydreaming Bookworm to discuss about the world building of her MG debut,Rump,which is a retelling of  Rumpelstiltskin.Thanks so much for stopping by,Liesl! :)

ABOUT RUMP:

Rump: The True Story of RumpelstiltskinIn a magical kingdom where your name is your destiny, 12-year-old Rump is the butt of everyone's joke. But when he finds an old spinning wheel, his luck seems to change. Rump discovers he has a gift for spinning straw into gold. His best friend, Red Riding Hood, warns him that magic is dangerous, and she’s right. With each thread he spins, he weaves himself deeper into a curse.

To break the spell, Rump must go on a perilous quest, fighting off pixies, trolls, poison apples, and a wickedly foolish queen. The odds are against him, but with courage and friendship—and a cheeky sense of humor—he just might triumph in the end.







ABOUT LIESL:

Liesl Shurtliff Liesl Shurtliff was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, with the mountains for her playground. Just like Rump, Liesl was shy about her name, growing up. Not only did it rhyme with weasel, she could never find it on any of those personalized key chains in gift shops. But over the years she’s grown to love having an unusual name—and today she wouldn’t change it for the world!
Before she became a writer, Liesl graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in music, dance, and theater. She now lives in Chicago with her husband and three young children, where she still dreams of the mountains. Rump is her first novel.


  



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Liesl's Guest Post:


An Insight of the Characters' World:

RUMP: THE TRUE STORY OF RUMPELSTILTSKIN by Liesl Shurtliff




When I started to write a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, I decided I wanted to stick pretty closely to all the major events of the original tale, the unique shift being in the point-of-view character. My Rumpelstiltskin was going to be a loveable hero, so how could I explain all the strange and horrible things he does in the original tale? The world of Rump plays and intricate and vital role in accomplishing this seemingly impossible task.   


Names


From what I recall, my very first idea for this story was that names would be at the center of Rump’s world. That made total sense to me. In the original Grimm’s tale of Rumpelstiltskin, it is his name that is the key in the end, though we don’t know exactly why or how. Some folklorists believe that Rumpelstiltskin was a demon that wanted the baby to feed upon, and discovering a demon’s true name gives you power over him. This answer seems logical enough, but I wanted to defy logic. My Rumpelstiltskin had to be loveable.


So the first thing I realized about this world was that names were intricately tied to a person’s destiny. Your name affects your future, how people judge you and treat you. A name might reveal social status or a particular power or virtue. It might also reveal weakness or the sorrowing of a parent. Though it’s magnified in the world of Rump, this is not wholly unfamiliar territory in the real world. Names have always held great meaning and power in many cultures; I just took it to another level. With Rump in particular, his name reveals a gap in his identity. His mother died before she could reveal his entire name, leaving him with a rather embarrassing portion. This is the starting point for the entire story.

 

Magic

 

Names were the easy part to work with in this world. It was an obvious choice from the beginning, but what about the magic of this world? As I considered other aspects of the tale, such as spinning straw into gold, I had to consider a magic system. Who could use magic? What were the consequences of its use? I felt the more specific and concrete the answers, the better. For Rump, the magic of spinning straw into gold is deeply rooted in his family history, as are the consequences of that magic, which don’t reveal themselves right away. And without giving away too much, Rump’s magic is also connected to his name.

Magical Creatures

 

Though I did not want to create a high fantasy world full of elves, dwarves, centaurs, mermaids, dragons, etc. I wanted Rump’s world to be magical beyond just the use of magic. That is, I wanted some magical creatures. This part was slower for me, probably because it intimidated me. I like magical worlds, but they also need to have some basis in logic in order for them to be satisfying, and I don’t like to make things up just to add flavor and intrigue to the story. Anything that pops up in my story, in the end, must have a necessity. So the pixies and gnomes and trolls that Rump runs into along the way are all entertaining in their own way, but they also each play roles in moving the story along and even bringing about the resolution. 

Building the world of Rump was challenging, but so rewarding as I found those moments of connection between the fantasy and reality. That’s when a fantasy world really comes to life.



 GIVEAWAY!!!

 

Liesl is giving away a signed copy of RUMP and a bookmark to one lucky INTERNATIONAL winner!Enter using the rafflecopter below and check the Terms And Conditions on the widget for the rules.Good Luck! :)



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday, April 07, 2013

An Insight Of The Characters' World: Guest Post + Giveaway by Emma Pass

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This is a feature where I ask authors to do a guest post discussing about the world building of their books and share their experiences in creating the world for their characters.For more information on this feature,click HERE.

Today,Emma Pass stops by at Daydreaming Bookworm to discuss about the world building of her debut,ACID.Thanks for stopping by,Emma!

ABOUT ACID:

Acid
2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID – the most brutal, controlling police force in history – rule supreme. No throwaway comment or muttered dissent goes unnoticed – or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a bloody crime she struggles to remember.

The only female inmate in a violent high-security prison, Jenna has learned to survive by any means necessary. And when a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID – and to uncover the truth about what really happened on that dark night two years ago.


 

  




ABOUT EMMA:

Emma Pass has been making up stories for as long as she can remember. Her debut novel, ACID, will be published in 2013, followed by another stand-alone thriller for young adults in 2014. By day, she works as a library assistant and lives with her husband in the North East Midlands.

Links:

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Emma's guest post:


ACID – An Insight of the Character’s World



Writing a novel set in the future is a tricky business, because often, you’re writing about things that don’t exist (yet). In one way, this is very freeing and exciting, as you can make everything up – literally anything can happen! But in another, it’s quite scary, because you can’t expect your readers to just believe whatever you tell them. Even a future world has to follow its own logic, and be plausible. With ACID, I wanted to create a version of Britain that reflected the brutality of ACID and how much it might be possible for a country to change over the span of a century, yet it had to be believable – familiar, even – so that the worldbuilding didn’t pull readers out of the story because it didn’t feel ‘right’.

I started with the politics, trying to work out how a police force as ruthless as ACID (which stands for The Agency for Crime Investigation and Defence) could have taken over from the government and got into power – then hung onto it for so long. I wrote pages and pages of notes, as well as looking back at notebooks from when I tried to write earlier versions of the book that didn’t work out.

I decided that the UK of 2113 would no longer have a monarchy, so I renamed it the Independent Republic of Britain, which reflects the way ACID have cut the country off from the rest of the world to ensure their power is absolute. At this stage, I read up on North Korea, where the authorities have done this in real life. North Korean citizens don’t even have access to the internet; instead, government officials have created their own intranet, loading information onto it so no-one sees anything they don’t want them to – something which, when people read ACID, they will see I drew on directly.

Next, I had to figure out the implications of this for the ordinary people who lived under ACID’s rule. At the time I started to write the book, there was a big outcry in the ‘real world’ about the UK becoming a ‘nanny state’, where everything people did was micro-managed by the government. For example, did you know that in 2009, the Shetlands, a tiny collection of islands north of the Scottish mainland, apparently had more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco police department?

So I tried to imagine what life would be like if this was truly taken to the extreme, with ACID watching your every move: deciding where you live, what sort of education you get, what sort of job you have, what food you can eat (and what you can’t), what sort of clothes you can wear, even how much TV you have to watch every day and who you marry – a process called LifePartnering, which people go through at 16. Everything depends on your social class, which, again, is decided by ACID, who’ve even gone as far as dividing up London, still the country’s capital city, into sections where people are placed according to their status. If you step out of line, punishment is swift, and terrifying. ACID have created super-prisons where you can be sent for the slightest infringement. Even hugging someone of the opposite sex who isn’t your LifePartner could result in you being arrested – and sent down without a trial. And as for the people they want to get rid of forever… well, you’ll have to read the book to find that out!

Creating ACID’s world was interesting and, at times, quite scary, as I began to see how easy it would be for a real-life dystopian society to develop. And it was fun, too – as a reader, I’ve always loved the ‘what if’ posed by these sorts of novels, and it was great to have the chance to create my own.
 


 

 Giveaway!!!

Emma is giving away a signed copy of ACID to one INTERNATIONAL winner.Enter using the rafflecopter below and see TERMS AND CONDITIONS on rafflecopter widget for the rules.
  
  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Book Review : Acid by Emma Pass

ACID by Emma Pass

My Rating: 4 Of 5 Stars

Publication Date:  April 25th 2013 by Corgi Children's Books/Random House Children's Publishing (UK)

Blurb:  2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID – the most brutal, controlling police force in history – rule supreme. No throwaway comment or muttered dissent goes unnoticed – or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a bloody crime she struggles to remember.

The only female inmate in a violent high-security prison, Jenna has learned to survive by any means necessary. And when a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID – and to uncover the truth about what really happened on that dark night two years ago.



My Review:

** I received an Advanced Reading Copy/Uncorrected Proof of this book from Random House U.K in exchange for an honest review.**

With a bad ass heroine like Lara Croft and a fast paced plot like Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series,ACID is one debut that you definitely must keep an eye on when it comes out!

Dystopia has now become quite a dangerous genre to base your story on,given the rise in competition on that particular genre.At least,that's what I think.Even more so in the YA group.When you've read so many books on a particular genre,it eventually becomes hard to handpick an exceptionally good one out of them.I think the thing that goes wrong most of the time is that the authors focus too much on world building and lose track of the story itself.

But thankfully,in ACID,the author was able to maintain that balance.While giving a well descriptive insight of a dystopian Britain,she also puts in some serious action,making it the perfect dystopian thriller for the YA crowd.The romance was also there,but to a minimum,letting us concentrate more on the action and suspense.

The story also had a good character building,though most of them,other than the protagonist herself,did not seem to have much big of a role.Not that I minded.I'm sure you wouldn't have either if every other scene you read from the book went on a bit like this:


I bring my arm up and pivot sideways so that,as Creep tries to grab me,he's thrown off balance and staggers against the worktop.Before he can recover I spin and kick out,planting my left foot squarely in his stomach.He doubles over with a strangled-sounding Oof. Then,as he tries to straighten up and get hold of the edge of the worktop, I lace my hands together and bring them down hard on the back of his neck.As he cracks his chin on the tiles at my feet,he gives a yelp of pain that rails off into a whimper.

'I tried to warn you,' I say, my throbbing skin and thumping head momentarily forgotten. 'Maybe you'll listen to me next time,huh?'

I push my foot into his neck to emphasize my point.Coughing,he rolls onto his back,trying to twist away from me.Blood - his own - is streaming down from his mouth; he must have bitten his tongue when he smashed his chin against the floor.

'What're you in here for, anyway?' He mumbles thickly, spitting red froth.

'You really wanna know?' I say.

He nods.

I lean down until our faces are so close we could kiss.

'I killed my parents,' I murmur, and watch his eyes go wide.
 

                                                                     -Excerpt taken from an uncorrected proof and may differ from the finished copy.
 
You'll definitely love ACID if you liked the Alex Rider series,Throne Of Glass or even The Paladin Prophecy.I really hope that ACID gets turned into a movie one day like Divergent or City Of Bones,because that would just be so awesome!

P.S Keep an eye on the blog for the next few days because the next post will be an awesome guest post by Emma Pass and you'll also get a chance to win a signed copy of ACID.North American readers,this just may be your golden opportunity because ACID won't hit shelves there until 2014.So don't miss out!
 

Monday, April 01, 2013

Book Review: Pretty Girl 13 by Liz Coley

Pretty Girl 13 by Liz Coley 
 
My Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Publication date:
March 19th 2013 by Katherine Tegen Books
 
Blurb: Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do — people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

 

 My Review:


**A received a copy of the book from the author as part of the blog tour and in exchange for an honest review.**
 
Pretty Girl Thirteen is a unique and creepy YA novel,one that will stay with you for a long time.The first impression which you probably got from the title is that the book might as well be one of the usual contemporary chick-lits.But I assure you,that is not so.Pretty Girl Thirteen explores a girl's mind which was left in turmoil after being kidnapped for three years.It also turns out that the protagonist,after returning home,has no memories of the events of those past three years.

With the help of a therapist she finds out that the reason for her amnesia is due to the fact that she has developed several different personalities within her,in other words,a case which is a complex form of dissociative identity disorder.To fully recover her memory of those past three years,she starts digging deep into her memories to discover these different personalities,the only ones who can help her remember what happened.

As the mysteries behind her kidnapping get revealed one by one,the story turns out to be more and more shocking,terrifying and heart wrenching.Cleverly written,Liz Coley's insight into the world of dissociative identity disorder is one that will not fail to amaze you.This book just may be the perfect read for fans of Lucy Christopher's Stolen or Emily Murdoch's If You Find Me.
 
You can win a copy of this book HERE.Giveaway is international.