Ember in the Ashes release day blitz

Today I'm really excited to participate in the release blitz for one of my favorite novels of 2015: Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir! Not only is Ember an incredibly compelling and unique fantasy novel, but Sabaa is absolutely delightful and super talented too! Give this book a shot, and you'll be dying for a second book just like the rest of us! Be sure to keep reading for a special note for Sabaa AND a blitz-only giveaway for signed copies of the book and amazing sword letter openers that come courtesy of Sabaa, Penguin Teen, and Rockstar Book Tours!

Author: Sabaa Tahir
Release Date: April 28, 2015
Publisher: Razorbill
Genre: young adult fantasy
Status: HOPEFULLY book 1 of a series! *crosses fingers*

Summary:  Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told.

Laia is a slave.
Elias is a soldier.
Neither is free.

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.

But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

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A letter from Sabaa Tahir:

Dear Readers,

Today, my “baby” AN EMBER IN THE ASHES is finally out in the world! From inception to pub date, this journey took eight years. And what a journey it was: writing, rewriting, revising, editing, querying, submitting; Meeting other debuts, bloggers, booksellers and librarians, and hearing their thoughts on EMBER. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the radness.

And now, the book is here! I am so excited to see it in the hands of readers. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. To celebrate release day, I’m giving away two signed, first-edition hardcovers of the book. Details below!

All my best,

Sabaa

Book Trailer:

About the Author:

Sabaa Tahir grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s 18-room motel. There, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother’s comic book stash and playing guitar badly. She began writing An Ember in the Ashes while working nights as a newspaper editor. She likes thunderous indie rock, garish socks and all things nerd. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Author Links:

    

Giveaway:

2 winners will receive a signed hardcover of AN EMBER IN THE ASHES. US only. 3 winners will receive a hardcover of AN EMBER IN THE ASHES and a Sword Letter Opener! US only. Ends on May 9^th at Midnight EST!

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Love, Lucy release day blitz

Today, I'm thrilled to hand the reins over to April Lindner for a special Italian-themed guest post celebrating the release of her new novel Love, Lucy, out now from Poppy. I've talked about Italy a little bit on the blog before, but it's one of my favorite places in the entire world. I love Italy, and I can't wait to revisit it in Love, Lucy. Check out April's advice for a road trip in Italia and a special giveaway at the bottom!

Release Date: January 27, 2015
Publisher: Poppy (Little, Brown)
Genre: young adult contemporary romance
Status: standalone 
Summary: While backpacking through Florence, Italy, during the summer before she heads off to college, 17-year-old Lucy Sommersworth finds herself falling in love with the culture, the architecture, the food...and Jesse Palladino, a handsome street musician. After a whirlwind romance, Lucy returns home, determined to move on from her "vacation flirtation." But just because summer is over doesn't mean Lucy and Jesse are over, too.

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Guest Post:

SOME RULES OF THE ROAD
by April Lindner

Like Lucy Sommersworth, the heroine of Love, Lucy, my parents gave me the gift of a lifetime: a backpacking trip to Europe. I was a bit older than Lucy—22, and just out of college—but when I arrived in Milan, Italy with a Eurail pass, a copy of Let’s Go: Europe, and a seventy-pound backpack I could barely lift, I was a wee bit terrified. Like Lucy, I spoke only a little bit of Italian, just barely enough to get by, and I wasn’t particularly good at reading maps or train schedules. Unlike Lucy, I was travelling solo.

Luckily, my journey began with training wheels. I’d just taken a college Italian class, and my professor had offered a safe crash pad for the first few days of my trip—in her family home in the Alps. Less luckily, when I reached Malpensa airport, nobody was there to pick me up. Giddy with excitement and jet lag, I wandered around the airport, eavesdropping on Italians as they hugged each other hello and goodbye, and had noisy arguments. I’d never felt more alone in my life. Where would I sleep that night if my ride didn’t show up?

Luckily, my professor’s brother arrived at last to whisk me away to the family home in Domodossola. The extended family welcomed and fed me, gave me tours of their city with its charming medieval center, helped me practice my Italian, and, when the time was right, brought me to the train station where my solo travels began for real. It was time to take off the training wheels.

If I’d felt alone back in the airport, I was even more so on that train to Verona, a city where I didn’t know a soul. In those pre-internet days, I could disappear into thin air and nobody would even notice I was gone. The thought was chilling, but oddly exciting.

By nightfall, I’d made it to Verona. I’d figured out the public transportation, found a youth hostel, and booked myself a bed. Best of all, I had introduced myself to a handful of other backpackers. We hung out together in the hostel’s common area, sharing bread and cheese, exchanging stories, discussing the rules of the road—those bits of practical wisdom our travels were teaching us. Here are a few:

Time passes differently on the road.  Spend a few very intense hours seeing the sites with strangers and by the end of the day, those strangers have become a part of your story. Years later you’ll see their faces in your photo album and still remember stray details of the adventures you shared together, even if you can’t quite recall their names.

Spontaneity is key. There are few things as magical as showing up at a train station with no idea where you’re headed next, picking a random train, and hopping on.

Janis Joplin said it best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.  When you’re carrying all your possessions on your back in a city where you don’t know a soul, you’re absolutely free. You can go anywhere, do anything. That freedom has its lonely moments—but it can be the doorway to all kinds of adventures.

 Embrace misadventure.  As carefully as you plan there will be crazy mistakes: wrong turns, slept-through train stops, multilingual misunderstandings, and all kinds of other blunders—and these will make the best stories. My misadventures are some of my favorite memories. The time I missed curfew and had to climb into my hostel through a second-story window. The morning when, hanging out my recently washed clothes to dry, I dropped my wet underthings out the window, onto a stranger’s head. The night when, with no room to stay in, I slept on Venice’s train station steps with about a hundred other backpackers, the stars above us and the Grand Canal stretched out before us.

Would I trade that last memory for a safe, comfy night in an actual bed?  Not on your life.

About the Author:

April Lindner is the author of three novels: Catherine, a modernization of Wuthering Heights; Jane, an update of Jane Eyre; and Love, Lucy, due out in January 2015. She also has published two poetry collections, Skin and This Bed Our Bodies Shaped. She plays acoustic guitar badly, sees more rock concerts than she’d care to admit, travels whenever she can, cooks Italian food, and lavishes attention on her pets—two Labrador retriever mixes and two excitable guinea pigs. A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, April lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.

Author Links:

    

Giveaway:

1 copy of Love, Lucy from Book Depository (INT)

3 signed Jane posters (US only)

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Blitz organized by Rockstar Book Tours.

Release Day Blitz: My So-Called Death by Stacey Jay

Stacey Jay's My So-Called Death is being re-released today and it's the first time it's available in a digital format! If you love light, fun, YA with just the right balance of romance and mystery, you have got to get your hands on it! Stacey Jay is also releasing a freebie prequel today, Confessions of a Teenage Zombie Queen.

Author: Stacey Jay
Re-release Date: October 7, 2014
Original Pub Date: March 8, 2010
Publisher: Flux
Genre: young adult paranormal comedy (zombies)
Status: book 2 of the Dead High series

Summary:

All in all it was a good day to die. If there really is such a thing.

You hear characters in movies say that all the time, but does anyone really believe the words “good” and “die” belong in the same sentence?

Still, it could have been worse. It could have been dark and spooky night instead of a beautiful Georgia morning in late October, with a light wind whipping across the Peachtree High School football field, making zombies seem like the last thing anyone needed to worry about…

Fifteen-year-old freshman, Karen Vera, is well on her way to ruling her school when a freak cheer leading accident turns her into, well, a freak. Much to her Horror and Dismay, Karen learns she is a genetic mutation, one of the Death Challenged--a politically correct term for a zombie!

Now she has to go to a top secret zombie school, eat brains for lunch, and take courses with names like "Secrets of Successful Morticians and their Uses for the Undead: Foundation and Beyond". And to make matters worse, her roommate is the most reviled girl at DEAD High, a complete head case, and maybe...a murderer.

Can Karen find out who's offing the nearly un-off-able Undead before she becomes the next victim? Can she convince the super-cute captain of the swim team that a girl can have a pathological love for pink and still carry on an intelligent conversation? Will she ever pass remedial Algebra for the Death Challenged?

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Coming soon from B&N!

Excerpt:

“Respecting your new room mate is essential. Now that you are one of the Undead, you could conceivably live for hundreds of years. The relationships you begin now will be the friendships that carry you through the millennium. Remember that, and conduct yourselves accordingly.”

--DEAD High Dorm Handbook for Incoming Students

“Wanted: White noise machine, will pay any price. Would be awesome if it had one of those aromatherapy things too. My roommate snores and smells! Pleaz help! Am exhausted and nasally tormented!”

--Note on Girls’ Dorm bulletin board

“Clarice sucks butt.”

--Bathroom stall, girls’ second floor bathroom

“What are you doing? Is that a cheerleader on my wall?” The shriek from the doorway made me scream and then burst out laughing.

I always laugh when I’m scared. I probably would have laughed as I was falling off the cheer pyramid if there had been time. Admittedly weird, but my friends back in my human life thought it was funny that I giggled all the way through horror movies.

“What are you laughing at? That has to come down.” The girl in the door glared at the United Cheerleader Association calendar I’d hung on my side of the room and threw her sweater on the floor. Her greasy, shoulder length black hair twitched angrily around her shoulders and her heavily lined gray eyes narrowed as if she’d just spotted a maggot on her arm.

Maggots are a zombie’s only natural predator—aside from angry mobs of humans or supernatural slayer types. Principal Samedi had already warned me to watch out for flies that love to lay their eggs in Undead flesh because, once they get started, maggot infestations can be almost impossible to get under control.

Ugh. Maggot infestation. If there was a grosser combination of words in the English language I couldn’t think of it.

The thought made me laugh again. I was in a laugh or cry situation. I had to giggle or I was going to lose what was left of my sense of humor.

“Ohmygod, what is wrong with you?” the girl asked, wrinkling her upper lip.

Guess she didn’t share my human friends’ appreciation for ill-timed chortling.

View the full excerpt here!

Author: Stacey Jay

Release Date: September 30, 2014

Publisher: Flux

Genre: young adult paranormal comedy (zombies)

Status: book 1 of the Dead High series

Summary:

All in all, it was a good day to die. If there really is such a thing.
You hear characters in movies say things like that sometimes, but does anyone really believe the words “good” and “die” belong in the same sentence?
Still, it could have been worse. It could have been a dark and spooky night instead of a beautiful Georgia evening in late October, with a light wind whipping across the Peachtree High football field, making zombies seem like the last thing anyone needed to worry about…
One second, freshman Karen Vera's on top of the most fabulous cheer pyramid ever. The next, she's lying on the pavement with seriously unflattering cranial damage. Freakishly alive without a pulse, Karen learns that she's a genetically undead zombie.
Enjoy this prequel to the “welcome horror spoof” (Booklist) MY SO-CALLED DEATH, a paranormal romantic mystery perfect for fans of Ally Carter and C.L. Stone.

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*Please note that Confessions is not yet free on Amazon, but it will be soon so be patient!

About the Author:

Stacey Jay is a recovering workaholic (or at least working hard at recovering) with two small children, and a passion for playing pretend for a living. She’s been a full time mom-writer since 2005 and can't think of anything she'd rather be doing. Her former careers include theatre performer, professional dancer, poorly paid C-movie actress, bartender, waiter, math tutor, and yoga instructor.

In her very limited spare time, Stacey enjoys cooking elaborate dinners and eatingthem very slowly, dressing up in costumes with her sons, and drinking wine with her husband. She loves to hear from readers and personally answers every single email she receives.

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