Authors are Rockstars! Guest Post + Giveaway with Megan Shepherd

 

 Hi guys,I know it's been awhile since I've last done a blog post,and unfortunately,it's going to continue that way until next May/June,when I'm finally done with my O'levels.But anyway,I'm really excited to be a part of the 2nd Annual Authors Are Rockstars tour.Full schedule of the tour can be found HERE so be sure to check out the other blogs participating as well! And without further ado,I'm glad to present my tour stop with Megan Shepherd,author of The Madman's Daughter!!!

Now on to the big question.Why did I choose her as a rockstar author?!!You see,I got the opportunity to read and review an ARC of her debut The Madman's Daughter right before its release last winter thanks to some awesome folks at HarperCollins.And I absolutely fell in love with it.This book gave me the courage to pick up more YA historical fictions which I seldom did before as they rarely aligned with my tastes.Not only that,reading The Madman's Daughter gave me this huge surge of adrenaline,the kind you get when listening to your favourite or any good rockband for that matter.So she definitely fits into the rockstar criteria. ;) 

She even did this post on Great Gothic Classics for today,a bit similar to the premise of her book,which makes her all the more awesome!Check it out below:

One of my favorite parts of being a writer is getting to read other books as legitimate “work.” Since my first series, THE MADMAN’S DAUGHTER, are Gothic thrillers, this meant brushing up on one of my favorite genres: Gothic classics. I adore all the dramatic and creepy elements of these novels: tortured romance, secrets in the attic, lightning crashing, windswept moors. Gothic books are such a wonderful blend of beautiful writing, melodramatic plots, tortured characters, and there’s usually a few brilliant twists. Here are some of my favorite iconic Gothic classics.

The works of Edgar Allan Poe

There really are too many too chose a favorite. The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart… Poe was a master of horror, science fiction, and satire. One of the first authors to truly explore death and its various manifestations as literary fiction, his works have been giving readers nightmares for generations.
 

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, Oscar Wilde

I love almost every Oscar Wilde quote I come across, and it’s a shame he only wrote one novel. Luckily, it’s a brilliant one. In the book, a beautiful young man named Dorian Gray sells his soul so that his portrait will age instead of himself, thus giving him eternal youth. This hedonistic freedom leads to a sinful life, which manifests on the portrait. It’s a creepy story of the supernatural as a metaphor for our own split natures and how we can never escape ourselves.

FRANKENSTEIN, by Mary Shelley

Even more than the book itself, I love the story behind how Mary Shelley came up with this idea. One night, she and her husband Percy Shelley, along with Lord Byron, were sitting around an old manor daring each other to tell stories. At the time, galvanism (experimentation on dead flesh) was a flashy new sort of science, and Mary twisted this idea into the story of obsessed Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his tortured monster. There are so many different versions of this story in books and movies, but I highly recommend reading the original. 

WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Emily Bronte

Along with her sister Charlotte, who wrote JANE EYRE, the Bronte sisters are known for starting the feminist Gothic genre. WUTHERING HEIGHTS is the story of a doomed love affair between beautiful Catherine and the brooding Heathcliffe, set on the windswept English moors, and should be required reading for anyone who loves tortured romance and family secrets.

Thanks for the lovely post,Megan!And now,on to the giveaway.Now I'm going to make this a super long one as I won't be active in the blogging world for a while.Also,this one will be an international giveaway,with two winners.One will get an ARC and the other will get a finished international edition paperback of The Madman's Daughter.Before that,here's a bit on The Madman's Daughter itself and you'll find a rafflecopter widget for the giveaway at the end of the blurb.

The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd

Publication date: January 29th 2013 by Balzer + Bray


Links: MyReview / Personal Guest Post With Author

Blurb:  
  
In the darkest places, even love is deadly.

Sixteen-year-old Juliet Moreau has built a life for herself in London—working as a maid, attending church on Sundays, and trying not to think about the scandal that ruined her life. After all, no one ever proved the rumors about her father's gruesome experiments. But when she learns he is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island, she is determined to find out if the accusations are true.

Accompanied by her father's handsome young assistant, Montgomery, and an enigmatic castaway, Edward—both of whom she is deeply drawn to—Juliet travels to the island, only to discover the depths of her father's madness: He has experimented on animals so that they resemble, speak, and behave as humans. And worse, one of the creatures has turned violent and is killing the island's inhabitants. Torn between horror and scientific curiosity, Juliet knows she must end her father's dangerous experiments and escape her jungle prison before it's too late. Yet as the island falls into chaos, she discovers the extent of her father's genius—and madness—in her own blood.

Inspired by H. G. Wells's classic The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Madman's Daughter is a dark and breathless Gothic thriller about the secrets we'll do anything to know and the truths we'll go to any lengths to protect.

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

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:


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:

Website
 
Blog

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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.
  
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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!
 

Book Review + Giveaway: The Dead And Buried by Kim Harrington

The Dead and Buried by Kim Harrington

My Rating: 4 of 5 stars


 Publication date: January 1st 2013 by Scholastic Point

Blurb:    A haunted house, a buried mystery, and a very angry ghost make this one unforgettable thriller.
Jade loves the house she's just moved into with her family. She doesn't even mind being the new girl at the high school: It's a fresh start, and there's that one guy with the dreamy blue eyes. . . . But then things begin happening. Strange, otherworldly things. Jade's little brother claims to see a glimmering girl in his room. Jade's jewelry gets moved around, as if by an invisible hand. Kids at school whisper behind her back like they know something she doesn't.

Soon, Jade must face an impossible fact: that her perfect house is haunted. Haunted by a ghost who's seeking not just vengeance, but the truth. The ghost of a girl who ruled Jade's school — until her untimely death last year. It's up to Jade to put the pieces together before her own life is at stake. As Jade investigates the mystery, she discovers that her new friends in town have more than a few deep, dark secrets. But is one of them a murderer?

My Review:

**I received an ARC of this book from Scholastic in exchange for an honest review.**

I'm not a big fan of horror stories,or even movies,for the record.So THANK GOD this wasn't that scary since I'm a total wuss and on top of that I started reading this at midnight.But I still kept the lights on while going to sleep,just in case.

Reading The Dead And Buried  was quite an experience for me as I haven't read a thriller like this in quite a while.It was so different from the other stories I've read this year,but in a good way of course.I liked how the author portrayed Donovan as a bit of the gamer type instead of a jock.She made me like him on the spot! And did I mention how sweet he was?I know it's supposed to be a thriller but I couldn't help swooning about the guy!But it's a perfect combination of everything,I tell you.And the fact that it is a stand-alone doesn't hurt either.You do not have to wait an entire year miserably with a cliff-hanger ending to know what happens next.In a way I find that oddly refreshing.Also,the book is definitely the re-reading type so you can carry it around with you and read it whenever you want since it's also perfect for a quick-read and wonderfully written.

I would highly recommend this to impatient readers as the story picks up quickly,people who are into mild horror.thriller or mystery,and to those who do not have enough time on their hands to sit down with a large volume to read.Even if you're not any one of the people mentioned before,I'd suggest you should give this a try as it's not everyday you can find a YA ghost story like this,with just the right amount of scariness so that you do not have to worry about staying up all night.

And a side note, I liked the old cover better,but since I liked the book so much,I decided to forgive the publisher for it. :)

GIVEAWAY!!!!

Interested in reading the book?Like right now?!! Then how about you enter below to win my ARC?I've run out of shelf space so I figured that I'd give it away.The giveaway's international and remember,cheating disqualifies entries! :) Good Luck!!! 


 


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