Books for kids, teens, & those who are young at heart

Tag: Meradeth Houston (Page 2 of 3)

The Liebster Award Take Two

liebster-awardWhen I saw that my writing buddy Meradeth Houston had nominated me for the Liebster Award, I had a rush of deja vu. Sure enough I went back in my archives and saw that I had been given this award before…by none other than Meradeth! (She must really like my blog. 🙂 ) But that was like a year and a half ago and the questions were different, so I’ll take another crack at it (although, I’ll admit I stole some of 11 facts from last time). And I have been retroactively nominated by Mary Waibel and J.Q. Rose, so make sure to check out Mary’s blog and J.Q.’s blog.

Here’s how the award works. The Liebster Blog Award translates to “the beloved” or “the dearest.” The award is given as a way to celebrate smaller blogs. (Only blogs with under 200 followers can be awarded.) Before you accept the award, there are a certain set of tasks you must complete. The first is to reveal 11 facts about you, answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who nominated you, and then create 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer.

So my 11 facts are:

  1. My favorite Harry Potter book is Goblet of Fire.
  2. I used to be a puzzle magazine editor and now edit books.
  3. When I was three years old, I told everyone I was a boy because I wanted to play baseball for the New York Yankees.
  4. My elbows are double-jointed.
  5. I once pierced my own belly button.
  6. The last book I read is Jennifer A. Nielsen’s The Shadow Throne.
  7. I have really weird dreams all the time, some of them lucid.
  8. My favorite artist is Vincent Van Gogh.
  9. I could eat pizza every day.
  10. I totally have a crush on Hook from Once Upon a Time.
  11. Many of the characters in Elixir Bound were based on real people (including myself!).

And here are the questions Meradeth asked me to answer:

1. What do you like best about your personality?

My stubbornness is both a blessing and a curse (it’s probably the main reason why I haven’t quit writing), but I have learned “not to cut off my nose to spite my face” (as my mother used to say I always did).

2. What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

Dare to get excited, even when you might get let down. We could all get hit by a marshmallow truck tomorrow. ~Laurie Halse Anderson

3. What does it take for a book to stay with you long after reading it?

A book that manages to surprise me in some way.

4. If you could tell an author that you admire one thing, what would it be?

“I wish I had written that.”

5. Who is one person who always makes you happy?

The Boy…even when he makes me angry, sad, or so frustrated I want to punch something (not him!), he brings so much joy to my life it makes me happy.

6. What was the best birthday you ever had?

My 30th birthday was pretty perfect. My family and a few close friends took a boat ride through the Thimble Island in Long Island Sound that ended with the sunset. It was summer, the breeze was cool, good food and drinks, I had my favorite people with me, and I didn’t have to do a single thing other than enjoy myself.

7. What drives you to share your thoughts about books on social media?

I hope that by sharing books I enjoy, other people will find books they, too, enjoy.

8. What’s the best thing an author ever said to you?

Never give up because you might be on the one yard line, and you just don’t know it. ~Donna Gephart

9. What do you consider the ideal length for a book in terms of the number of pages?

No ideal number. Enough pages to tell the story that needs to be told.

10. What fictional character do you most resemble?

Well, I guess that would be the one in Elixir Bound that I based on myself. 🙂

11. If you could give the person reading this an uplifting message, what would it be?

“Find you magic!”

So now I must make my nominations…and I nominate you, dear reader. Any blogger out there who would like to participate, just leave a comment here and I’ll include a link to your blog here. You can just answer the same questions posed above.

I’ve got fabulous bloggers Christopher Mannino, Suzanne de Montigny, and Marie Laval to take up my offer of being nominated for the Liebster Award. And I’ll be happy to add any other bloggers who would like to play (instructions in the comments)…just let me know in the comments. 🙂

Cover Reveal Surrender the Sky by Meradeth Houston

I love all of the books in Meradeth Houston’s Sary Society series and it’s a special thrill to share the cover of the most recent one, Surrender the Sky (see my 5-star Goodreads review here). Be sure to enter the giveaway and check out all of Meradeth’s books. If you pre-order Surrender the Sky, you’ll get The Chemistry of Fate free! Oh, and click on over to Meradeth’s blog to see my guest post today about Sary in the real world.

The third book in the Sary Society series, SURRENDER THE SKY, has a shiny new cover! (But you’re gonna have to read about what it’s about before I let you see it!)

Release Date: May 2014

Synopsis:

Gabby lives by two unbreakable rules: don’t expose her kind, the Sary, and don’t fall in love—too bad some rules are made to be broken.

When Gabby’s most difficult charge accidentally shoots her in front of a class full of students, the event exposes her carefully hidden identity. She shifts from looking like a normal teen to her secret Sary form, revealing her wings and the existence of her kind—immortals who try to keep people from committing suicide. Her incident attracts the attention of the next leader of the Sary, Jassen, who offers her an impossible bargain: she can keep her wings if she makes amends with those who know the truth. Things get more complicated when a rebel Sary, intent on exposing them to the world, starts interfering with Gabby’s work. And there’s no denying her attraction to Jassen, who is torn between his duties and his heart. With threats at every turn and her immortality on the line, Gabby has to find a way to save the Sary or surrender the sky forever.

Surrender The Sky 300dpi

Surrender the Sky is a stand alone title that follows COLORS LIKE MEMORIES and THE CHEMISTRY OF FATE, with cameos from several of the characters in the first books! It will be available in May wherever ebooks are sold!

2014SURRENDERTHESKYFREEPROMO

Join in the celebration for a $10 Amazon gift card! Use the rafflecopter below for entries 🙂

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MeradethHouston

Find Meradeth Houston online at: www.MeradethHouston.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and of course her blog!

Colors Like Memories by Meradeth Houston Paperback Party

Meradeth Houston, author of the paranormal books Colors Like Memories (see my Goodreads review here) and The Chemistry of Fate (see my Goodreads review here), stops by to talk about the paperback release of Colors. Welcome, Meradeth!

Colors Like Memories 200x300Hi! *waves* I’m incredibly excited to announce the paperback release for COLORS LIKE MEMORIES. The ebook release has been a blast, and it is especially awesome to actually hold the book in my hands 🙂 Here are three things I think you might find fun about the book:

1. It’s got a pretty sweet cover 🙂 And I’m rather partial to the blurb:
Julia has a secret: she killed the guy she loved. It was an accident—sort of.

Julia is a Sary, the soul of a child who died before taking her first breath. Without this ‘breath of life’ she and others like her must help those on the verge of suicide. It’s a job Julia used to enjoy, until the accident that claimed her boyfriend’s life—an accident she knows was her fault. If living with the guilt weren’t enough, she’s now assigned to help a girl dealing with the loss of her mother, something Julia’s not exactly the best role model for. If she can’t figure out a way to help her, Julia’s going to lose her position in the Sary, something she swore to her boyfriend would never happen.

2. There have been some pretty awesome things said about it (if I do say so myself, but I may be a bit biased). See:

“…I applaud the author for providing a writing that has the power to encourage, inspire, help, heal and simply serve as a platform to stimulate communication for any reader (regardless of age), who is feeling hopeless. If you are looking for an interesting read, this book is well written, interesting and has several positive messages that the reader can take away from the story. I would recommend this book to any reader.” TWC Amazon Review

“Colors Like Memories was an amazing YA paranormal romance. It will make you soar with wings then drop you off and catch you once you get near the ground.” Michelle Kullman Amazon Review

“COLORS LIKE MEMORIES is an achingly beautiful tale of love, loss, and new beginnings. Meradeth Houston writes with a clean, clear prose that packs a punch. She carries her characters through the full spectrum of emotions, and the reader is swept along in the journey.” RunningnWriting Amazon Review

3. You don’t have to wait for book #2! THE CHEMISTRY OF FATE, also set in the Sary world, is already available, and you can grab a copy at Amazon, B&N, or my publisher MuseItUp Publishing. Book #3, SURRENDER THE SKY, will also be released soon 🙂

You can order COLORS LIKE MEMORIES at my publisher’s site: MuseItUp Publishing, or find it on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Ebook copies are also available on all vendor sites!

Those are my three things, and if that’s not enough to interest you, well, I’ve also got a little giveaway running for a book of your choice. Check out the rafflecopter below 🙂

MeradethHoustonA bit about Meradeth:

>She’s a Northern California girl, but now lives and teaches anthropology in Montana.

>When she’s not writing, she’s sequencing dead people’s DNA. For fun!

>She’s been writing since she was 11 years old. It’s her hobby, her passion, and she’s so happy to get to share her work!

>If she could have a super-power, it would totally be flying. Which is a little strange, because she’s terrified of heights.

Find her online:

Website : Blog : Twitter : Facebook : Pinterest : Goodreads

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Meradeth Houston on Ending The Chemistry of Fate

Let’s give a warm welcome for returning guest poster Meradeth Houston. Her new adult novel The Chemistry of Fate (see my Goodreads review here), a companion to her YA novel Colors Like Memories, recently released from MuseItUp. The Chemistry of Fate Is on sale for $2.99 for the duration of the blog tour. And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a giveaway! (Whew…)

horizontal blog tour banner

The Way It All Ends

Thanks so much for hosting me Katie! I thought it would be appropriate to talk about novel endings here today, especially after you helped me figure out what to do with the ending of The Chemistry of Fate :).

When it comes to novels there area few different types of endings:

  • The happily ever after (HEA), where all, or at least most of the main plot threads are tied up and there’s the promise that things are going to go well for everyone at all. Think most harlequin novels and Disney movies.
  • The cliffhanger, where there’s another book where things will (hopefully) be tied together. Usually some of the main plot threads are undone and the reader is usually left tearing their hair out waiting for the next book. The Hunger Games had some good cliffhanger endings.
  • The question mark ending (I’m inventing terms—there are probably official words for these, but what’s the fun in that?), where the reader is left thinking about what happened and is still wondering about it days later. Some important thread isn’t totally tied off, either intentionally or not. This happens in movies like The Graduate, Inception, and Primer.
  • The what-the-heck-just-happened ending, where there’s a dues ex machina ending that kind of leaves the reader wondering just what happened. I felt like the last book in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate did this (literally!) and it’s often not totally satisfying. Or there’s the kill-everyone-off version too (Hamlet…).

These are some of the common endings, though I know there are more (I’d love to hear more examples!) and it varies from person to person what kind of ending works best for them. (I even know someone who prefers the “everyone dies” ending.) Personally, I love an ending that leaves me thinking, so long as some of the threads are neatly tied off. The ending of Inception was utter perfection to me.

With Chemistry, I originally had an ending that left things really hanging. While I knew who survived and who didn’t, I purposefully left it ambiguous. Which was fine, until I started discussing the next book with my editor :). She made the very valid point that what I was doing wasn’t going to work, as the book wasn’t resolved enough to flow with book #3 (which is based on two very different characters). So, I went back to the drawing board (and emailed writing friends to beg support!).

The ending that currently stands is what I came up with. I won’t give anything away, but it works a whole lot better :). (Though if anyone’s read it, I’d love to hear what kind of guesses you have as to what originally happened at the end!) But, there is something to be said about leaving your readers feeling really uncomfortable with the ending, and I’d rather heed my editor’s wise advice!

Of course, this makes me really curious. What is your favorite novel or movie ending? What kind of ending do you prefer?

The Chemistry of Fate 333x500The Chemistry of Fate blurb:

“They are everywhere, can be anyone, and are always the last person you’d expect.” When Tom stumbles across his grandfather’s journal, he’s convinced the old man was crazier than he thought. The book contains references to beings called the Sary, immortals who are assigned to save humans on the verge of suicide. They certainly aren’t allowed to fall in love with mortals. Which the journal claims Tom’s grandfather did, resulting in his expulsion from the Sary. As strange as the journal seems, Tom can’t get the stories out of his head; especially when he finds the photo of his grandfather’s wings.

Tom’s only distraction is Ari, the girl he studies with for their chemistry class.

Ari has one goal when she arrives in town: see how much Tom knows about the Sary and neutralize the situation. This isn’t a normal job, but protecting the secrecy of the Sary is vital. If Tom is a threat to exposing the Sary to the public, fate has a way of taking care of the situation, usually ending with the mortal’s death. While Ari spends time with Tom, he becomes more than just an assignment, but how far can a relationship go when she can’t tell him who she really is? When she finds out just how much Tom actually knows about the Sary, Ari is forced to choose between her wings, and her heart.

THE CHEMISTRY OF FATE is a companion to COLORS LIKE MEMORIES and is set before the latter takes place. It is geared toward an upper YA, or New Adult audience. Buy it at MuseItUp Publishing, Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and other ebook retailers.

About the Author:
MeradethHouston
Meradeth’s never been a big fan of talking about herself, but if you really want to know, here are some random tidbits about her:

  • She’s a Northern California girl, but now lives and teaches anthropology in Montana.
  • When she’s not writing, she’s sequencing dead people’s DNA. For fun!
  • She’s been writing since she was 11 years old. It’s her hobby, her passion, and she’s so happy to get to share her work!
  • If she could have a super-power, it would totally be flying. Which is a little strange, because she’s terrified of heights.

Find more about Meradeth and her books on her website, her blog, Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

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The Chemistry of Fate by Meradeth Houston Cover Reveal

Hot off the presses, here is the cover of THE CHEMISTRY OF FATE by fellow Muse author and past guest poster Meradeth Houston.

The Chemistry of Fate 200x300

“They are everywhere, can be anyone, and are always the last person you’d expect.” When Tom stumbles across his grandfather’s journal, he’s convinced the old man was crazier than he thought. The book contains references to beings called the Sary, immortals who are assigned to save humans on the verge of suicide. They certainly aren’t allowed to fall in love with mortals. Which the journal claims Tom’s grandfather did, resulting in his expulsion from the Sary. As strange as the journal seems, Tom can’t get the stories out of his head; especially when he finds the photo of his grandfather’s wings.

Tom’s only distraction is Ari, the girl he studies with for their chemistry class.

Ari has one goal when she arrives in town: see how much Tom knows about the Sary and neutralize the situation. This isn’t a normal job, but protecting the secrecy of the Sary is vital. If Tom is a threat to exposing the Sary to the public, fate has a way of taking care of the situation, usually ending with the mortal’s death. While Ari spends time with Tom, he becomes more than just an assignment, but how far can a relationship go when she can’t tell him who she really is? When she finds out just how much Tom actually knows about the Sary, Ari is forced to choose between her wings, and her heart.

THE CHEMISTRY OF FATE is a companion to COLORS LIKE MEMORIES and is set before the latter takes place.

www.MeradethHouston.com

meradethhouston.blogspot.com

https://twitter.com/MeradethHouston

http://www.facebook.com/MeradethHouston

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17452243-the-chemistry-of-fate

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