Showing posts with label author blurbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label author blurbs. Show all posts

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Vicarious Gratitude Giveaway

It's time for another gratitude giveaway! I'm very thankful to Lindsay Cummings, Victoria Scott, and Kristi Helvig for providing blurbs for VICARIOUS. Scoring blurbs for a book's jacket is something that is highly stressful to most authors, and extremely so for me, because I have been rejected a lot--way more than I ever got rejected by agents. (Stuff like this is part of what I mean when I tell people the rejection part of writing increases dramatically after you land an agent.)

All three of these fabulous authors have written books that I think are good comparison titles for Vicarious, and I am grateful they found the time to fit reading my ARC into their busy schedules. If you have enjoyed their novels, chances are you'll enjoy the action-packed sci-fi storyline and tough but vulnerable heroine of my latest novel too :)




Lindsay also hosted the book's trailer reveal! Vicarious features Korean sisters as main characters. ICYMI: You can read more about why I made Winter and Rose Korean in my blog tour posts.




For this contest, I'm giving one lucky reader their choice of one currently available book by Lindsay, Victoria, or Kristi. This giveaway is INT and I will be ordering from The Book Depository or Wordery. Here's some information on each author's latest book or series.


An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.

Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.

The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?


Do you already own a copy of The Murder Complex? Check out Lindsay's other books here.


Ever since the Titans first appeared in her Detroit 
neighborhood, Astrid Sullivan’s world has revolved around the mechanical horses. She and her best friend have spent countless hours watching them and their jockeys practice on the track. It’s not just the thrill of the race. It’s the engineering of the horses and the way they’re programmed to seem so lifelike. The Titans are everything that fascinates Astrid, and nothing she’ll ever touch.

She hates them a little, too. Her dad lost everything betting on the Titans. And the races are a reminder of the gap between the rich jockeys who can afford the expensive machines to ride, and the working class friends and neighbors of Astrid’s who wager on them.

But when Astrid’s offered a chance to enter an early model Titan in this year’s derby, well, she decides to risk it all. Because for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, it’s more than a chance at fame or money. Betting on herself is the only way she can see to hang on to everyone in the world she cares about.

Victoria's got two fantastic series in addition to Titans. See her whole collection here.



Most people want to save the world; seventeen-year-old Tora Reynolds just wants to get the hell off of it. One of the last survivors in Earth's final years, Tora yearns to escape the wasteland her planet has become after the sun turns "red giant," but discovers her fellow survivors are even deadlier than the hostile environment.

Holed up in an underground shelter, Tora is alone--her brilliant scientist father murdered, her mother and sister burned to death. She dreams of living on a planet with oceans, plants, and animals. Unfortunately, the oceans dried out ages ago, the only plants are giant cacti with deadly spines, and her pet, Trigger, is a gun--one of the bio-energetic weapons her father created for the government before his conscience kicked in.

When family friend, Markus, arrives with mercenaries to take the weapons by force, Tora's fury turns to fear when government ships descend in an attempt to kill them all. She forges an unlikely alliance with Markus and his rag-tag group of raiders, including a smart but quiet soldier named James. Tora must quickly figure out who she can trust, as she must choose between saving herself by giving up the guns or honoring her father's request to save humanity from the most lethal weapons in existence.

Have you already read Burn Out? Here's more information about Kristi's other books!

Enter in the Rafflecopter below. Don't forget to comment on the post and tell me one bookish thing or person you are grateful for :)


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Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Girl Against the Universe Gratitude Giveaway

Girl Against the Universe is out on the shelves and I can barely believe it :D It feels really good to have released a book that is fun and entertaining, but also has the possibility to be comforting, inspiring, and even helpful to some readers. I'm already blown away by the responses I've gotten from early readers who related to Maguire on a personal level.

Honestly, I'm proud of this story for a lot of reasons, another of which is the lovely author blurbs on the back cover.



I don't know how much you know about the process of authors blurbing books, but asking another author to read your book for blurb can be kind of an awkward experience for everyone. You have to put yourself out there to get rejected. You have to put another author--who most likely knows just how bad getting rejected feels--in a position to tell you no. Every book I say, "I'm not going to do it this time. It always ends with me feeling terrible." But then I do it anyway, because if *I* am not willing to advocate for my book, then how can I expect anyone else to do it? And there's hard data that author blurbs result in more sales.

But it's not just about the numbers. An author blurb helps a busy librarian, who might not have time to read your book, still be able to recommend it. An author blurb gives a bookseller information about your book months before it hits the shelves. When I see a book blurbed by an author I love, it definitely makes me more interested in reading it. And honestly, there is nothing more validating than having your peers read your work and like it enough that they're willing to put their names on it.

So this is a thank you post to my cover blurbers, Tamara Ireland Stone and Miranda Kenneally. (I received two other lovely blurbs that were too late for the cover, but I'll save them for another giveaway when the GATU paperback releases. Love you, Sarvenaz and Ann <333)

I approached Tamara and Miranda for blurbs because they both wrote books that I love, and I felt their readers would enjoy Girl Against the Universe.  They were both kind enough to take time out of their busy schedules to read GATU, and they both believed in the story enough to personally endorse it. Tam, Miranda--thank you for supporting my latest novel :)

I'm giving one lucky reader two books--their choice of one by each of these authors. This contest is INT and I will be ordering from The Book Depository or Wordery. Here's a little more about Tamara and Miranda's latest titles, but feel free to choose from their backlists as well:


If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling.

Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off.

Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn't help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she'd be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school. So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam's weekly visits to her psychiatrist.

Caroline introduces Sam to Poet's Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more "normal" than she ever has as part of the popular crowd . . . until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.

Do you already own a copy of Every Last Word? Check out Tamara's other books here.


Captain of the soccer team, president of the Debate Club,
contender for valedictorian: Taylor’s always pushed herself to be perfect. After all, that’s what is expected of a senator’s daughter. But one impulsive decision—one lie to cover for her boyfriend—and Taylor’s kicked out of private school. Everything she’s worked so hard for is gone, and now she’s starting over at Hundred Oaks High.

Soccer has always been Taylor’s escape from the pressures of school and family, but it’s hard to fit in and play on a team that used to be her rival. The only person who seems to understand all that she’s going through is her older brother’s best friend, Ezra. Taylor’s had a crush on him for as long as she can remember. But it’s hard to trust after having been betrayed. Will Taylor repeat her past mistakes or can she score a fresh start

Defending Taylor releases on July 5th, but if you don't want to wait, Miranda's got scads of other books to choose from!


Share your own thoughts about author blurbs to get the comment points for the giveaway. I'm really curious to know what you think!

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