Blog Tour For Done Growed Up By Mary Morony

BeachBoundBooks is pleased to be coordinating a Blog Tour for the literary fiction novel, Done Growed Up written by Mary Morony. The tour will run from August 1 - August 29, 2016

---

About the Book

Title: Done Growed Up | Author: Mary Morony | Genre: Literary Fiction | Number of Pages: 266 Publication Date: June 8, 2016

 

Book Description: When we last left the Mackey Family in the late 1950s, their lives were in turmoil. Divorce, alcoholism, racism, death, puberty - what WEREN'T they dealing with? Ethel, a black maid in a racist world - the true heart and soul of the Mackey Family, is the children’s only constant as she fights her own numerous demons. Twelve-year-old Sallee struggles to understand the world with little enlightenment from the adults around her. Her older sister Stuart, a college student New York City, finally escaped the South and drama of her family only to succumb to the terrible temptations of urban life; Gordon, a 14 year old boy feeling anger and hatred as he begins to slowly realize the harsh reality of the people and world around him; while Ginny, newly divorced mother off our, finds that she's not the spoiled princess she once was. She is overwhelmed with responsibility, feelings of abandonment, and alcoholism. Joe, Ginny’s ex, and the children’s father, revels in new-found wealth and popularity with women, yet yearns for family and simpler times.

Author Mary Morony was born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, mainly by her family’s beloved black maid. Her childhood was a time of segregated schools and many places that prohibited black people. Morony’s inspiration for the Apron Strings Trilogy was her strong relationship with her maid and caretaker, who taught her more about life and love than anyone has since. Morony also uses personal life tragedies and triumphs to produce novels with real experiences and true emotion.

What readers are saying...

"Terrific read! If you haven't read it's prequel "Apron Strings," you will still enjoy...I was intrigued by the depth of soul in Morony's characters - she writes in a way where you can see what they're seeing and feel what they're feeling." - Amazon Reviewer

"I thought Mary Morony did a wonderful job of capturing what it's like to be a child going through the turbulent stages of adolescence. Her characters were very real and relatable, which made the book that much better! I highly recommend giving this a read!" - Melinda (Amazon)

"Even though this book is a sequel, it can certainly stand alone. It was a good easy read and I laughed, I cried and I couldn't wait to see what would happen next." - Amazon Reviewer

"Mary Morony really makes her characters come alive!" - Max (Amazon)

My Review:  This story takes place in the late 1950's when times were simpler, but not always easy. Sallee struggles to understand the world which is not easy for a twelve year old. Rich, well developed characters.I really enjoyed reading this book. Now I need to book one of this series. 

About the Author

Mary Morony’s rich characters are drawn from her childhood memories and lifelong experiences. Growing up in a household where both of her parents (and their maid!) had issues with alcohol, her parents split up in a time when divorce was a humiliating family secret.  Morony had a lot of material to work with, even as a child.

By the time Morony was 35, she had been married four times.  Divorced, widowed and the mother of four children, she has experienced more in her life than most people would in five lives.  It has been said that “A life of tragedy and pain has bred a writer full of wit and compassion” in Mary Morony.  As her characters grow and learn, she teaches lessons learned from her own experiences.

Mary Morony is an author who can write about tragedy from the inside and guides her readers through it to compassion, humor and recovery. She brings Southern charm, irreverence and wit to bear against subjects as vast as racism and as personal as alcoholism, always with a heart and soul that makes her work undeniably appealing.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Google+ | Goodreads

Blog Tour Giveaway 

Prize: One winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card or $25 PayPal cash prize, winner's choice Giveaway ends: August 29, 11:59 pm, 2016
Open to: Internationally
How to enter: Please enter using the Rafflecopter widget below.
Terms and Conditions: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. A winner will be randomly drawn through the Rafflecopter widget and will be contacted by email within 48 hours after the giveaway ends. The winner will then have 72 hours to respond. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, a new draw will take place for a new winner. Odds of winning will vary depending on the number of eligible entries received. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook. This giveaway is sponsored by the author, Mary Morony and is hosted and managed by Stacie from BeachBoundBooks. If you have any additional questions feel free to send an email to stacie@BeachBoundBooks.com.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Blog Tour Children Of Icarus By Caighlan Smith

BeachBoundBooks is pleased to be coordinating a Blog Tour for the young adult fantasy Children of Icarus written by Caighlan Smith. The tour will run from August 10 - August 24, 2016.

---

About the Book

Title: Children of Icarus | Author: Caighlan Smith | Publisher: Switch Press | Publication Date: August 1, 2016 | Genre: Young Adult Fantasy | Number of Pages: 312

Book Description:

It's Clara who's desperate to enter the labyrinth and its Clara who's bright, strong, and fearless enough to take on any challenge. It's no surprise when she's chosen. But so is the girl who has always lived in her shadow. Together they enter. Within minutes, they are torn apart forever. Now the girl who has never left the city walls must fight to survive in a living nightmare, where one false turn with who to trust means a certain dead end.

History and Inspiration Behind the Book

Since I was a wee kidlit, I’ve loved Greek Mythology. That love has only grown and nowadays heavily influences my writing, some more than others. Children of Icarus, my new novel, is counted among the “some”. The inspiration for this book was, of course, drawn from the myth of Icarus—the boy who flew into the sun. But a lot of the setting of the book comes from the myths about Icarus’ father, Daedalus, who built the labyrinth. Children of Icarus takes place within a labyrinth, which the main character has been chosen to enter. She was promised paradise should she find her way out of the labyrinth, but paradise seems more unlikely than ever as she’s forced to confront one horror after another. Many of said horrors have been inspired by Greek mythology, mainly the adorable monsters that populate every great hero’s tale.

The thing is, I had the idea for Children of Icarus back in junior high. The plot was different in every way back then, aside from the setting of the labyrinth. Even the protagonist was an older, altered version of the way she is now. I actually started writing the story back then, but barely got a page in before giving up and moving on to something else. Fast-forward many a year, and I’m studying Greek mythology for my Classics minor at university. It reminds me of that old idea I had, so I revisit it and decide to tell the story of how my protagonist ended up in the labyrinth. I started writing from there, and everything about the story changed. For the better. And now we have a book. Ta-da!


My Review: Awesome book. The author weaves a nightmarish world. A world that keeps you turning the page. Great, believable characters. 

About the Author

Caighlan Smith was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador on June 1st, 1994. She grew up in the scenic coastal community of St. Philip’s, overlooking the dramatic north-west Atlantic. As a kid, she loved to play in the woods around her house, loved to tell stories and believed in magic.

Caighlan, who is studying English, Classics and Creative Writing at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, is a supporter of universal girl-child education and has been involved with the Teachers Action for Girls campaign in Uganda.

Her great loves are reading, gaming and, of course, writing. The “C” in her name is hard, the “gh” is silent.

Facebook | Twitter | Website 

Blog Tour Giveaway

Prize: One winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card or $25 PayPal cash prize, winner's choice Giveaway ends: August 24, 11:59 pm, 2016
Open to: Internationally
How to enter: Please enter using the Rafflecopter widget below.
Terms and Conditions: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. A winner will be randomly drawn through the Rafflecopter widget and will be contacted by email within 48 hours after the giveaway ends. The winner will then have 72 hours to respond. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, a new draw will take place for a new winner. Odds of winning will vary depending on the number of eligible entries received. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook. This giveaway is sponsored by the author, Caighlan Smith and is hosted and managed by Stacie from BeachBoundBooks. If you have any additional questions feel free to send an email to stacie@BeachBoundBooks.com.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Suffer The Children By Sara Jayne Townsend

SUFFER THE CHILDREN - blurb

Orphaned at eighteen, Leanne's life is adrift in a sea of grief and drug use. She washes up on the shore of estranged relatives, the Carver family, struggling with loss of their own. The transition from her South London council estate to her new home in the Surrey middle-class suburbs is difficult for Leanne.

But beneath the respectable veneer of the quiet neighborhood, something terrifying lurks. Displaced and troubled teenagers are disappearing. Leanne recruits her cousin Simon and his girlfriend Carrie to help get to the bottom of the sinister mystery. Can the three of them stop a creature of unimaginable evil before Leanne becomes a target?

My Review:  I am a big fan of supernatural, horror, and mystery books. I loved this story. Great, believable characters. Simon, Carrie, and Leanne set out to solve the mystery of troubled teens who have come up missing. Can they solve this mystery before Leanne becomes the next victim? This story is a real page turner. Suspense. Horror. Mystery. Thanks, Sara, for an awesome read.  

1. Tell us about your book and how the story came to be.  

Many, many years ago I had a job working for a software distribution company. The office was only a 20-minute walk from home, so I walked to work. My route took me past a house that always gave me the creeps – it looked neglected and abandoned, with tattered curtains, dirty windows, peeling paint work. I started to imagine that something sinister and inhuman lived there. It inspired a short story, called ‘Kiddiwinks’, about a group of children who dared each other to break into the house where rumours were rife a witch lived. They discovered that there was an old woman who lived in the house, and she ate children. Literally.

When I put the story in front of my writing group they encouraged me to turn it into a novel. That novel eventually became ‘Suffer the Children’, though not much of the original idea remains. The creepy house is still in the story, though.

2. What three words best describe your main character?

Vulnerable. Damaged. Survivor.

3. Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you     think makes them believable?

I usually start with an idea for a character and start making notes about their back story, which helps bring them to life. Characters have to have flaws, but they have to be sympathetic enough for the reader to care about what happens to them. The key to creating believable characters is making them sound like real people. Dialogue really helps. I am forever eavesdropping on people having conversations around me – on the train, the bus, in restaurants. Sometimes these conversations end up in novels.

As for naming characters – if a character springs out of my head fully formed, which sometimes happens, they often name themselves. If not, I do a bit more research. Quite often I’ll work out from the age of the character when they would have been born, and I’ll look up popular baby names from the right country and decade, and pick one for the character. If all else fails, I resort to the book of baby names that lives on my writing research shelf, and I’ll open a page at random to pick a name.

4. Do your characters follow your plot path or do they take on a life of their own? Do you keep them in check?

Generally I plot quite carefully before I start writing the story. Sometimes characters decide to go off on a different path than the one I’ve plotted for them. I’m OK with them doing that, as long as they end up at the final destination. I approach plotting a novel rather like planning a route on a GPS system. Sometimes the GPS can take you along unexpected routes, and as long as you still know where you’re going to end up, sometimes it’s worth following the unexpected route.

5. Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? If so, how did you over come it?

Since I’ve started plotting, I rarely suffer from writer’s block because when I sit down to write now, I know what’s coming next. When it happens now, it’s usually a clear message from my muse that the novel isn’t working – the characters aren’t very interesting; the plot isn’t engaging enough; there’s not enough back story. Generally it means I have to go back to the beginning of the novel and start it again with a different approach.

6. What types of books do you like to read?

I like crime and horror. Generally there has to be violence and death for a book to hold my interest!

7. What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?

I like playing video games, tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and practicing my rock chick act with my 1962 Burns bass guitar.

8. What’s next for your writing? Are you working on a new story?

I’ve got two projects on the go at the moment. I am writing a new horror story based on a real-life house on the Yorkshire moors that has been abandoned for 50 years. I have also recently started work on the fourth novel in the amateur sleuth series. That one seems to be whispering to me the most insistently at the moment.

9. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve received?

Never give up. No one becomes a bestselling author overnight, and the road to publication is paved with many rejections.

10. Where can readers find you and your books?

I have a blog, called ‘Imaginary Friends’ (https://sayssara.wordpress.com) and my website (http://sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com) has links to all of my books. I also have an author page at the MuseItUp Publishing e-store (http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/our-authors/70-our-authors/authors-t/420-sara-jayne-townsend) and all my books can be bought from Amazon (US link - https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003QROE8S and UK link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B003QROE8S). 

Sara Jayne Townsend is a UK-based writer of crime and horror, and someone tends to die a horrible death in all of her stories.  She was born in Cheshire in 1969, but spent most of the 1980s living in Canada after her family emigrated there.  She now lives in Surrey with two cats and her guitarist husband Chris.  She co-founded the T Party Writers’ Group in 1994, and remains Chair Person.

She decided she was going to be a published novelist when she was 10 years old and finished her first novel a year later.  It took 30 years of submitting, however, to fulfil that dream.

Her latest release is SUFFER THE CHILDREN, a supernatural horror novel that is available now from MuseItUp Publishing (https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/coming-soon/suffer-the-children-detail).

Learn more about Sara and her writing at her website (http://sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com) and her blog (http://sayssara.wordpress.com). You can also follow her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sarajtownsend) and Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3500282.Sara_Jayne_Townsend), and buy her books from Amazon (UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B003QROE8S and US: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003QROE8S). 

My Review Of Selfies In The Wild By C. L. Murphy

About the Book

Title: The Adventures of Lovable Lobo - Selfies in the Wild

Written and illustrated by C.L. Murphy

Published by Peanut Butter Prose

Date published: August 1, 2016

Recommended ages: 3 to 7

Number of pages: 28

Summary: Lobo and his sidekick raven find a trail camera in their neck of the woods, and it attracts the attention of forest friends. Images captured have never been sillier or more candid. Just as their wild dispositions are exposed, the photo shoot comes to an unexpected end and they're all left wondering why. The reason may be obvious.

My Review: The critters are curious about this camera they find. They discover how fun it is to take pictures of themselves until the batteries die. Fun characters. Great illustrations. I loved reading this book.

Take a peek inside...

About C.L. Murphy

Cathy (C.L.) has been creating with and for kids for many years, and because of it she's ever armed with crayons and not afraid to use or share them. She’s faster than a speeding turtle, more powerful than a newborn bunny, and nearly able to leap tall tales in a single bound. She's in a position to use her unassuming powers in a never-ending battle for good and silliness while traveling to the deepest (sometimes dark) part of her imagination. She’s been a member of SCBWI since 2012. She lives in a wonder-filled forest, amongst the wildlife with her husband and other untamed animals. They have two wildly perfect sons and a scrumptious new granddaughter.

Website Blog Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google+ Goodreads Instagram

https://youtu.be/o95DNZc5xOk

The Giveaway

Prize: One winner will receive a $200 Amazon gift card or $200 PayPal cash prize, winner's choice

Giveaway ends: August 31, 11:59 p.m., 2016

Open to: Worldwide

How to enter: Please enter the rafflecopter HERE.

Terms and conditions: There is NO purchase necessary to enter or win. One winner will be randomly drawn through the Rafflecopter widget within 48 hours and notified by email once the giveaway ends. The winner will then have 72 hours to respond. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, a new winner will be chosen.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Review Of Tinker Bee By Erin Beth Liles

Tinker Bee is not just a bee. She's a fairy bee! Despite her love of all things fairy, her parents and fellow bees just want her to be a bee. But when the flower patch is in trouble, it's Tinker Bee who saves them all—just by being a fairy.

My Review:  Colorful pictures draws the young reader in. Tinker Bee want to be a fairy. But what good is a fairy bee? Tinker Bee saves the flower patch by being a fairy bee. I really enjoyed reading this story to my two year old granddaughter. 

Loving Everything British Photo Contest Blast

BeachBoundBooks is pleased to be coordinating a Photo Contest Blast for the author of Wicka: The Chronicles of Elizabeth Blake, Christy Deveaux. The blast will run July 20 - August 3, 2016.

To celebrate her recent trip to England, to get ideas for her next book, Christy Deveaux is holding an British inspired contest! Simply share a picture of yourself with a British theme i.e. In England, in an English pub, eating English fare such as a fish and chips, reading a British novel, etc. - be creative! 

One Winner will receive a British Themed Gift Basket worth $50.
The winner will be selected at random through Random.Org.

---

About the Author: Christy Deveaux

Christy Deveaux is the author of The Chronicles of Elizabeth Blake series. Her highly anticipated first book in the series, Wicka, was just released this spring (2014). Inspired by traveling across Europe solo at a very young age, and many travel adventures since, the character and story line behind Elizabeth Blake was born. Christy majored in political science and earned a cross-disciplinary degree from the University of Western Ontario. She lives in Toronto, Ontario with her husband, three children and a fish named Cow.

About the Book: Wicka: The Chronicles of Elizabeth Blake

Elizabeth Blake, a seventeen year old girl from Ann Arbor Michigan, thinks she's enrolling in an international school in the south of France to finish her final year of high school. Instead, she falls in love; finds out that she is a witch from an ancient family ––who weren’t thought to exist anymore; and discovers that her life is in danger, as the Elders believe that she is the heir to a legend they fear above all else.

Wicka has been compared to other fantasy paranormal tales such as Twilight, written by Stephanie Meyer and Harry Potter, written by J.K. Rowling. Young adults and grown ups alike are sure to love this adventure filled magical romance. Get your copy today at bit.ly/Wicka. 

*Note: purchase of the book is not a requirement to enter this free contest.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon

Contest Rules

Prize: One winner will receive a British Themed Gift Basket ($50 value)

Giveaway ends: August 3, 11:59 pm, 2016

Open to: Internationally

How to enter: Entrants should submit their British themed photos by completing the form below.

**Nude, semi nude, non British themed or pornographic images will be disqualified**

Terms and Conditions: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Only pictures submitted between July 20 and August 3, 2016 will be eligible to win. A winner will be randomly drawn through the Random.org and will be contacted by email within 48 hours after the giveaway ends. The winner will then have 72 hours to respond. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, a new draw will take place for a new winner. Odds of winning will vary depending on the number of eligible entries received. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook. This giveaway is sponsored by the author, Christy Deveaux and is hosted and managed by Stacie from BeachBoundBooks. If you have any additional questions feel free to send an email to stacie@BeachBoundBooks.com.