SHATTER: A SEASIDE NOVEL Spotlight and Giveaway

SHATTER: A SEASIDE NOVEL by Rachel Van Dyken

Release Day: May 19

Sometimes the only way to heal... is to shatter.

Rock star Alec Daniels has it all. Love, fame, money... But being in the limelight isn't all it’s cracked up to be, and after one bad choice comes back to haunt him he is left picking up the pieces of his carefully constructed life. Now he faces the toughest decision of his life: Deal with his mistake like a man, or dive back into the dark hole of depression, drugs, and denial that have been his comfort for so long. One wrong move could destroy everything. His girlfriend, his family, and his future.

EXCERPT:

Her eyes widened a bit when I purposefully flexed my arm and then she looked down, a beautiful pink blush staining her cheeks. “Remember how I feel about your blushing?” I whispered, trying with very ounce of self-control I possessed, not to make a complete fool of myself and toss her over my shoulder cave-man style.

“Is it the same way you felt last night about—”

“—And we’re done.” My brother Demetri cleared his throat, appearing out of nowhere. “Can a person un-hear something? Anyone? Anyone?” He shook his head as if that would make everything go away and cursed. “Seriously, I’m almost embarrassed for the sand.”

PARTY TIME: SHATTER, Birthday, and NY Contract Celebration

Rachel Van Dyken Got the Contract Blog Hop: May 15-19

Rachel Van Dyken, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling Author, has much to celebrate this month. Not only is her birthday on May 19, but she was wildly successful with her recent, self-published books, including PULL, a Seaside novel. I received my signed copy in the mail, along with a T-shirt signed by Rachel, Demetri, and Alec. *swoons*

 

I can't wait to read it.

The next book in the series, SHATTER, is releasing on May 19 on Rachel's birthday. She's continuing to write, and I know for sure there will be one more book in the series called FALL.

In addition to her independent successes, she signed a New York contract for THE BET and ELITE! *throws confetti*

Rachel is absolutely one of my favorite authors, an amazing writer, and so nice. She is a role model for me, and I aspire to be like her when I grow up. :)

Find Rachel online:

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Goodreads

Party Favors:

Each stop on the hop is giving away different party favors. Hop on over to Calle J. Brookes's blog for the final destination, and if you're just getting started, you can find the list of other hop stops on host J. Gunnar Grey's blog.

In honor of her birthday, new contract, release of SHATTER, and the blog hop, I am giving away a $10 Amazon.com gift card to one blog-hopper. Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for stopping by the thicket. Congratulations, happy birthday, and many, many more, Rachel!

-ck

Review: Travelling through the 'Gateway to Reality'

GATEWAY TO REALITY

Becca J. Campbell

Released: March 26, 2013

Publisher: Surreal Media Studios

Synopsis: Talented artists shouldn't be waiting tables, scraping by, and living mediocre lives. But that’s exactly what art school graduate Wes Teague is doing.
Then he wakes from a bizarre dream, haunted by the sense that his life isn't real. A harrowing truth presents itself--the real world lies in his dreams, not when he's wide awake.

The dream world he enters each night is rich and vibrant. Chicago appears the same on the surface, but chaos runs rampant as gravity, physics, and other laws of nature become fluid, changing unexpectedly. There, Wes's parents, brother, and sister are strangers. His girlfriend Emily doesn’t recognize him. Wes longs to return, to unlearn the truth about his dual reality.

Wes would sacrifice almost anything to get back to blissful ignorance in a false world.

But now he has feelings for the real Emily.

I was given a free copy of this ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review.

Review: This book has a fascinating premise and thought-provoking concepts, dealing with many heavy, existential questions. The book reminded me of Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD mixed with the characters’ personal MATRIX. The author used good metaphors; my favorite: “The soft voice pulled at him, a gentle melody in a wasteland of pain.” Beautiful.

At times, paragraphs of sentences were short, making the narrative choppy and not aesthetically pleasing. I felt the narrative was slow to start and that there was a lot of telling. More showing with such a rich topic would have been great, especially with character actions and feelings. Repetition, sometimes unnecessary, slowed down the narrative as well. Use of dialogue could have been improved; it seems forced and unrealistic in some places, and there simply isn’t very much.

However, the love story toward the end became more fluid, and the ending was cute. The author chose a fantastic topic because it allowed for such creativity to craft the different worlds, and I so appreciate her imagination in this book. All of the questions were answered by the last page, and there was a clear message at the end.

My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

All Things Writerly

Good night, Readers and Roses!

Hope you all are having a wonderful National Poetry Month. I'm writing a poem a day for the entire month of April as a part of National Poetry Writing Month, a.k.a. NaPoWriMo.

Also, good luck to all my writer friends who are participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this month. I'm sending the writerly winds of creativity your way (and waving my grass pom-poms, for those of you who follow me on Twitter).

To my writer friends who have embraced the A to Z challenge: I LOVE reading your posts. A shout out to one of my favorites: Stop by Murphy's Pub for an A to Z series about her WIPs Impartials & Immortals (which I am impatient and excited for her to finish and publish).

I am now posting my writing at my other blog, Poisoned Rose's Writings. Check it out and leave a comment to let me know what you think. Your feedback is always appreciated.

As you can see on the left sidebar, I've almost reached my reading goal for this year. I think it's time to increase the stakes and challenge myself to read a little more. Reading 20 books was not as hard as I thought it would be, and it's only April.

But I have read some phenomenal books, most notably The Bet by Rachel Van Dyken and 18 Things by Jamie Ayres. Rachel writes the most fantastic, perfect-in-their-imperfection love stories, and Jamie helped me find myself again through her book. Links to their blogs can also be found on the left side of my blog.

Unfortunately, I have not worked at all on my baby rose; it's still struggling to grow in the thicket. On the plus side, only one more month until school ends and I'm a senior! My focus right now is finishing this semester and writing one poem every day.

I'm also celebrating 15 followers on my blog. Many, many thanks to all of you!

As always, thanks for stopping by the thicket. Wishing you all a successful and fulfilling reading and writing April.

-ck

Traveling through the Wormhole for Einstein

Hi Readers and Roses,

To celebrate Albert Einstein's 134th birthday, Stephen Tremp, Laura Eno, and L.G. Smith are hosting National Wormhole Day Blog Hop.

The blog hop question is: Where would you go if you had a guaranteed round-trip ticket through a wormhole to anywhere in time?

I would travel back to the time when the bible was written. I'd want to talk to the scribe/author, find out what they were thinking when they wrote it, what inspired them, how long it took them to write it, their motive behind writing it, basically questions I'd ask any author today. The bible and its ideals have literally started wars and have served as a life guide for generations of people, not to mention it has never been out of print. The bible is a seriously powerful and influential piece of literature, and from that perspective, I'd love to meet whoever wrote it down.

Check out other wormhole travelers here and share your story. Have fun hopping through the wormholes! Happy 134th birthday, Einstein!

Where would you go if you had a guaranteed round-trip ticket through a wormhole to anywhere in time?

-ck