Showing posts with label guest post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guest post. Show all posts
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Today Katie Hamstead is visiting again as a part of the blog tour for book 3 of the Kiya series.



Title: Kiya: Rise of a New Dynasty (Kiya Trilogy Book #3)

Author: Katie Hamstead
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Genre: New Adult Historical Romance
Release Date: February 25th 2014

Blurb:
Tut has grown into his position as Pharaoh, but he is a wild young man. Naomi fears for him, not only because of his recklessness, but because he has put his trust in Ay–the man determined to destroy Naomi—despite her and Horemheb advising against it.
Meanwhile, death and slavery hang over Naomi and her family. With fear of the booming Hebrew numbers causing talk of enslaving them, conscription is reinstated and Naomi fears for the lives of her other children. Especially since Ay's children are now adults, and just as dangerous as their father. They threaten to take Itani, conspire against Tut, and push for power.
But Tut is in trouble. While Ay's daughter draws Horemheb's attention, and Naomi deals with the struggles of her family, everyone's distraction could spell death for the young Pharaoh.


I loved this book is my favorite of the series so I really recommend it.


Now Katie is going to talk to us about writing a series. 

                                             *****
When I first started planning out Kiya, I had thought it would be only one book. But as I thought about events I wanted to cover, I realized I needed to make more than one book. So I decided to make it into three books.

The very original concept ended at the end of book one, with Naomi fleeing with Tut. Sort of a riding of into the sunset to live happily ever after. But then I realized, there was more to the story than an HEA, especially when Horemheb started smashing my head for more attention than I originally intended.
So I worked out events I wanted to include and constructed a timeline. Then I needed to decide how I would begin and end each book. Book two at first started with the third assassin entering her father’s house in Thebes, but I felt like her journey through the desert needed to be addressed and it created a great action opening scene.

A great deal of time passes in these books, so book three skips over six years so the momentum isn’t slowed. That was a difficult decision to make, but necessary. The plot needed to focus on the main people; Naomi and Tut.

Once I had where I’d break the stories worked out, the rest fell into place. There were times during book two where historical events lacked, so I became concerned my filler for Naomi’s life wouldn’t make it long enough, but it worked out in the end.


About the Author:

Born and raised in Australia, Katie’s early years of day dreaming in the “bush”, and having her father tell her wild bedtime stories, inspired her passion for writing.

After graduating High School, she became a foreign exchange student where she met a young man who several years later she married. Now she lives in Arizona with her husband, daughter and their dog.
She has a diploma in travel and tourism which helps inspire her writing. She is currently at school studying English and Creative Writing.

Katie loves to out sing her friends and family, play sports and be a good wife and mother. She now works as a Clerk with a lien company in Arizona to help support her family and her schooling. She loves to write, and takes the few spare moments in her day to work on her novels.


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I know it's been a while since I posted but I'm back and with a great guest post.

Katie Hamstead is here again with a new release that you don't want to miss:

Title: Branded
Author: Katie Hamstead
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Genre: New Adult Romantic Suspense

Blurb:
Terrorists have invaded Sydney, and Allison King barely escapes her brother’s wedding reception alive. She and her siblings flee, but their parents are killed by firing squad.
 Now Ali’s on the run and terrified. While searching for other survivors, she is captured by the General who leads the invasion. He’s smitten by Ali, and when she refuses to submit to his whims, he brands her for death. In a wild act of defiance, she snatches the branding rod and sears the mark onto his face. Marking not only him but also sealing her fate. Ali manages to escape and flees into the bush once more where she finds a group in hiding. Even with the scars left by the General, Ali learns to love and falls in love with the young man who found her—Damien Rogers. 
But the General is hunting her. When he discovers their location, and finds her with another man—Damien—his wrath is kindled and his obsession is inflamed. Ali must put herself on the line or the General could kill her family, those who help her, and most significantly, the man she loves.


Being Katie and Aussie she will share with us about writing a novel set in Australia:

A Novel Set in Australia

Branded is set in the Sydney area, mostly the western suburbs and Blue Mountains. I set most of my contemporary books around there simply for the fact that it is where I grew up.
I heard somewhere once that you should write what you know. So when it comes to things that involve high school, university etc I set my stories in the schooling system I am familiar with. My time as a foreign exchange student and the few years I have lived in the USA have taught me the basics of the American school system, but I don’t know it the way I do the Aussie one.
For Branded, the concept also originated when I lived in Australia still. I came up with the concept in 11th grade English, and wove ideas together while staring out at the bush on hiking and road trips. The bush is a place that has this ancient spirit to it, it’s hard to explain, but I am completely in love with it. So Branded has some beautiful settings that I wanted to showcase.
Knowing the bush like that, I know easy it is to disappear. So with a map for my characters to go by, it was the perfect place to provide refuge to the people who escaped the carnage of the “invasion”.
Plus, not many books are set in Australia, so why not? J


About the Author:
Born and raised in Australia, Katie’s early years of day dreaming in the “bush”, and having her father tell her wild bedtime stories, inspired her passion for writing.
After graduating High School, she became a foreign exchange student where she met a young man who several years later she married. Now she lives in Arizona with her husband, daughter and their dog.
She has a diploma in travel and tourism which helps inspire her writing. She is currently at school studying English and Creative Writing.
Katie loves to out sing her friends and family, play sports and be a good wife and mother. She now works as a Clerk with a lien company in Arizona to help support her family and her schooling. She loves to write, and takes the few spare moments in her day to work on her novels.

Thank you Katie! So you can buy Branded here if you're interested and don't forget to visit the rest of stops of Katie's blog tour. 
Also enter the giveaway just filling the rafflecopter below:


a Rafflecopter giveaway
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A new year and new guest posts by awesome authors sharing with us what they know, what they like, and what they write.

Today the author Sashi Kaufman is visiting, she’s the author of this awesome YA Contemporary that will release on March, 1st.

click the image to see the book on goodreads.

Andrew West goes to an all-girls school and he still can’t get a date. If that’s not bad enough, his Mom is the headmaster. Everyone seems to have the wrong idea about Andrew. His teachers think he’s a good student who doesn’t apply himself -he really is trying. The kids at his old school thought he was a goth. His cousin Barry thinks he’s gay.

When his Thanksgiving break goes tragically awry he decides to run away. He catches a ride with a strange group of older teenagers. The Freegans are street performers and dumpster divers. As Andrew travels the country with his new friends he leaves behind the expectations of others and discovers what he expects of himself.



So now I leave all of you with Sashi and this amazing post.

Here’s What I Know
Here's what I know about the phrase, "Write what you know."
I think it's deadly if you interpret it too literally.
If everyone only wrote exactly what they knew, then literature would be composed of little more than a series of highly dramatic self indulgent journal entries. You know, like facebook.
My current work in progress has a main character who is a partially deaf seventeen year old guy. He plays soccer too. I played soccer until 8th grade but that's about all we have in common, at least on the surface. As I hammer out this first draft I periodically get the giggles when I know I've mixed up corner kicks and goal kicks. Or when I realize I have no idea if hearing aids have a test button.
Here's why I feel qualified to write about someone so different from "what I know". I think we have spheres of knowing and if something is within one of those spheres then I feel qualified to write about it. For example, I am a daughter and a sister. Therefore I feel pretty qualified to write about families. I'm also now a mother. I wrote characters who were parents before I was one, but my writing about parents definitely changed once I became one. In my debut The Other Way Around the main character Andrew West runs away from home with a group of older teenagers who are street performers and dumpster divers. When I first wrote the draft his mother was kind of a dragon lady. Whenever they spoke on the phone she was harsh and uncaring and he was selfish and unsympathetic to her fears about his well being.  My editor (also a parent) pointed out that I might try a a little harder to imagine the experience from her perspective and that might soften and deepen my portrayal of her. He was right. In the time between first draft and this particular set of revisions I had become a mother myself. And that changed everything that I knew about how to write that part of the book. I hope it made it better.
Does that mean that everyone who is a parent should write about parenting? Or that if you're a sister, you know what it's like to be or have a brother? No, not necessarily. Everyone has different spheres. I like to think that the home I grew up in, where few gender stereotypes were modeled or visible, made me particularly open to what makes us human more than what makes us male or female. You can read my book and see if you agree :)
It's possible to research the rules for penalty kicks or the buttons on a hearing aid. More challenging to research feelings. I remember high school and middle school vividly and the feelings I attach to those experiences. I remember the fear of being different or being excluded -which are some of the things my main character wrestles with. I remember the desire to have someone I was attracted to notice me and I remember the desperation and despair when they did not. I remember the incredible breath in your mouth tension before a first kiss. I remember the ones that made my knees wiggle, and the ones that mopped my face with spit.
The more you are open to experience and the feelings that come with it, then the more you know. The better you observe yourself, your reactions as well as the people around you and their reactions and feelings, the more you extend your spheres of understanding.
I believe that readers will hold you accountable for a character who rings false more than a detail about soccer rules. So write what you know. Write everything you know. It's probably a lot more than you think.



Sashi Kaufman is a middle school English and science teacher who lives in Portland, Maine with her husband and daughter. She is also an amateur trash picker. The Other Way Around is her debut novel and it will charge into the world on March 1st 2014.


on twitter @sashikaufman

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Today I have a guest on my blog and I'm very excited about it. Kristen Strassel is a New Adult author with a very interesting and good NA paranormal romance. 

So I think she's perfect to give us her opinion about Paranormal Romance in New adult so without more waiting I leave you with Kristen's post:

In a time not so long ago, people married right out of high school. The husband got a job, the couple bought a house and started a family. And that was pretty much it. They lived happily ever after, or at least pretended to. The cycle would repeat. Now financial restraints prevent that from being a reality in most cases, and our customs have changed. It’s created the phase of life that we capture in literature as New Adult.

The transition to adulthood is the most exciting time in most people’s lives. As the door to the world as we knew it closes, we’re handed a blank slate and told to write our own future.  For the past eighteen years, we had been closely guided by parents, teachers, and other authority figures, and then we are on our own. We’re expected to know what to do.  Some of us make a smooth transition, and others stumble.  

If we can guarantee one thing in our lives now, it’s change.  We won’t work the same jobs our whole lives. Many of us won’t have one romantic relationship. We’re in a constant state of flux. I think this is why readers are identifying with the New Adult category. It’s about new beginnings, making decisions, and finding out who you really are. Chances are, you’ll find yourself in the “new adult” phase of life more than once.  If you move to a new place, change careers, or get a divorce, you will be starting over. You’re not the same person at 18 as you will be at 28 or 38. Your decisions will reflect that.

Readers have proven they love paranormal and fantasy with middle grade and young adult books. The two biggest series of the last two decades are Harry Potter and Twilight. It’s a natural transition for those readers to want to read New Adult paranormal books. Because readers are finding themselves in this cycle of renewal more often, they are going to identify with characters who are facing the same challenges they are.

Paranormal is also about the unknown. The dark corners, the things that go bump in the night. All those things that your mother warned you about. If a character finds themself in a paranormal world, they are going to have a clean slate, all right. The rules of the regular world don’t apply to supernatural creatures. Will the human characters be able to adapt and survive?  Will those characters thrive in this new, unknown environment? How will they deal with the challenges that this parallel universe presents them?


New Adult Paranormal is the ultimate metaphor for the journey a new and hopefully better place in life.


About the author Kristen Strassel: Kristen shares a birthday with Steven Tyler and Diana Ross. She spends each day striving to be half as fabulous as they are. She’s worn many hats, none as flattering as her cowboy hat: banker, retail manager, fledgling web designer, world’s worst cocktail waitress, panty slinger, now makeup artist and aspiring author. She loves sunshine, live music, the middle of nowhere, and finding new things to put in her house.  A former resident of Las Vegas, Kristen now lives in Massachusetts.

Don't forget to check out and read her awesome book: 


Book Name: Because the Night
Book Genre: NA Paranormal Romance
Book release date:  November 5, 2013


Because The Night on Barnes and Noble: To come.

Because The Night Book Blurb: Sex, blood, and rock n’ roll.
Immortal Dilemma is the hottest band in the Las Vegas vampire rock scene. They draw insatiable fans from around the globe, thanks to a supernatural attraction called Bloodlust. Tristan craved such an opportunity to fill his empty mortal life, and now he has eternity to earn his place along the legends of rock n roll debauchery.

Callie always feared that Tristan’s excesses would get him into trouble, but she never thought they’d lead him to immortality. To reconnect with him, she must weave her way through a world not only she had no idea existed, but does not welcome her.

Blade turned down a spot in Immortal Dilemma after learning what he must sacrifice for that lifestyle.  He finds Callie a refreshing change from the girls in the vampire rock scene.   When Callie drags Blade back into the world of Immortal Dilemma, his resistance drives her into the waiting arms of Tristan, who shows her the true meaning of Bloodlust. But the very things that Callie fights so hard to save are the things that will change her life forever.

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Today I'm excited to have here Katie Hamstead an awesome writer that I'm fortunate to say is my friend and CP.

As I already told all of you her book Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh is out on stores and she’s doing a blog tour so everyone can know more about her and the book.



In this occasion I asked her to talk about why she made Kiya Hebrew. So here it's what she has to say:

Why did I make Kiya Naomi the Hebrew?

Back in High School, when I first learned about the Amarna period and Kiya, I was also studying the Old Testament and Hebrew culture. Back then, there wasn’t much known about Kiya at all, and no one seemed to know where she came from or where she went. So, I thought to myself; What if she was a Hebrew, and because they were considered a “lower” people to the Egyptians they had to cover her true origins?

While doing my research, I discovered that Kiya is believed by most historians to be a Mitanni princess. Yes, this is very different to a Hebrew girl, but there are certain qualities and beliefs the Hebrew culture holds within it that I wanted her to have. So, I made up the story that Akhenaten was given a dream telling him to take her, then he made up another story saying she was created and sent by Aten.

This as a result, gives me the room to explore not only Egyptian history, but what the Hebrews were doing in Egypt during the time between Genesis and Exodus. Using the later period theory, where the Hebrews followed Moses out of Egypt during the time of Ramses II, this places the Hebrews in Egypt during the reign of Akhenaten. So how did they go from Joseph being loved by the Pharaoh to slaves? By making Kiya Naomi the Hebrew, I was able to create a fiction world around these historical theories.

Anabel back here, isn't it interesting how she intertwined history with fiction. If you haven't read it I think you should consider doing it since it's a very interesting read.

You could buy it here:

Also follow her to know more about Kiya and all her new stories.
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Twitter - @katieteller1