Mundie Moms

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Blog Tour: Ask The Passengers by A.S. King, Author Interview


I am thrilled to be the next stop in Little Brown's Ask the Passengers blog tour. I'm excited to announce that Ask the Passengers is out in book stores TODAY! Happy Release Day to Ask the Passengers!! Author A.S. King has graciously stopped by the blog today to talk about her book. 


Hi A.S. thank you for stopping by Mundie Moms today. What was it about your character Astrid Jones that inspired you to write her story? 

I think I was inspired by her strength. Questioning is a confusing and hard time and in Astrid's case, she had pressure from all sides to box herself. But she took the time to ask a lot of questions. She didn't just bend to the pressure. Also, I wanted to write about this family--the whole Jones family--and how Astrid's journey affects everyone in the family. 

What's something you admired most about your character? 

Like most of my teenage characters, Astrid is pretty mature. She's dry and calm--not an adult-perceived dramatic caricature of a teenager. Astrid is more mature than her own parents in many ways. I like that about her. And I like that her dad can learn from her, because I think adults can learn a lot from mature teens like Astrid.  

I like the concept that Astrid's escape/object to confide in are unsuspecting passengers in planes as they pass over head. When I was in high school I didn't have something quite as exciting as her, I wrote in my journal. When you were in high school, what did you use to confide in? 

I wrote in a journal also. A lot. I have about 20 of them. (*Waves to one college roommate who read them all and told fellow students about them* Hi! You rock!) I also had a best friend I could talk to sometimes, and two very awesome older sisters. But Astrid's habit of sending love to random passengers in airplanes is also mine. I've been doing that since I was a kid. The older I get, the more I appreciate what sending love to random people did for me. I seem to be a very open person who accepts widely and judges rarely. 

What do you hope your readers take away from Astrid's story? 

I think every reader takes something different from every story, so I can only tell you what I took away from it as I wrote it. In order: Love is more important than everything. Boxes are for cereal, not people. Everyone is going through something. Socrates was boss.

What's something you'd tell tell other Astrids out there, who are struggling to break free from society's definitions, and find their own happiness and place in the world? 

I guess I'd try to make sure they know that happiness is really the most important part. And I'd make sure to let them know that everyone is happy in different ways. Finding your own happiness is your job on Earth. We only get one shot. Why waste it on trying to live up to other people's ideas of right or wrong?

About the Author:


About the author: A.S. King has recently returned from Ireland, where she spent a decade dividing herself between self-sufficiency, teaching adult literacy, and writing novels. She has also been a rare poultry breeder, photographer, master printer, contractor, summer camp counselor, pizza delivery driver and, for a week or two, a complete loser who did nothing at all.

Amy’s newest YA novel, Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown October 2012)is a Junior Library Guild selection, an Indie Next List pick and has been called “Another thoughtful, and often breathtaking achievement” by Booklist in one of five starred reviews for the book. Everybody Sees the Ants (Little, Brown October 2011) was an Andre Norton Award finalist, a Cybils finalist, and a 2012 YALSA Top Ten book for young adults. Her 2010 YA novel, Please Ignore Vera Dietz was a 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, an Edgar Award Nominee, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book for Teens 2010, a Junior Library Guild selection and a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Her first YA novel, The Dust of 100 Dogs, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, an Indie Next pick and a Cybil award finalist. Her short fiction for adults has been widely published and was nominated for Best New American Voices 2010. Amy now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and children and is a huge fan of Kurt Vonnegut, corn on the cob, libraries, and roller skating.

You can visit A.S. King via her Website | Twitter | Facebook

About the Book:

Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better.

In this truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions, Printz Honor author A.S. King asks readers to question everything--and offers hope to those who will never stop seeking real love -quoted from Goodreads

Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The Blog Tour:
Be sure to check out the rest of the tour by visiting the following blogs:

10/23 Mundie Moms
10/24 Forever YA
10/25 YA Love

Cover Reveal: Shadow of the Mark by Leigh Fallon

I'm beyond excited to be part of a group of bloggers who are revealing Leigh Fallon's cover for her upcoming sequel, Shadow of the Mark. Check out this cover!!



Talk about cover love. I love the dark sky's in the back and how the purple flows down. This cover is stunning. What do you guys think? 

About the cover

I know, there's no mistaking it. This is definitely a Carrier Series  cover, but that was the intention. After the amazing reception to the  cover of Carrier of the Mark, HarperCollins wanted Shadow's cover to  be instantly recognizable. And it is, but the new darker color palette  reflects the darker tone that this installment brings, and the pink  and purple really make it pop. I love it and think HarperCollins have  done another amazing job. I hope you like it too.

Shadow of the Mark

Life for Megan Rosenberg just got a lot more complicated.

While she evoked the air element, and her feelings for Adam
intensified, a web of lies, deceit, and betrayal has been spun around  her.  With the Order tightening its hold, and the
reinstatement of the Mark Knights, Megan has more questions than  answers as the
Marked Ones grow in strength.

New people arouse suspicion, the DeRises start behaving
strangely, and Megan begins to unravel a destiny shrouded in mystery.   It?s a destiny the Order has struggled to hide,
and a destiny someone from the past?far in the past, has already laid claim to.

Alliances will be made, and friends will be lost, as the
Order?s dark secrets are revealed by the very thing they sought to destroy.

Pre-Order from Amazon

About the Author: Leigh Fallon


I started out life in South Africa. A year later my parents moved home to Dublin, Ireland. When I was older and realized my parents had moved me from exotic Durban, to sedate Rathfarnham, Dublin 16, I was rightly ticked off.

Giving up lions for sheep, I grew up in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains where I went to a convent school and had to contend with uniforms, gabardines, and nuns. When not dodging the beady glare of  the Sisters of Mercy, I was devouring every book I could get my hands on.

I traveled all over Europe while working in banking and treasury, but I gave up my calculator in favor of a keyboard and haven't stopped writing since. My first book, Carrier of the Mark, was published by HarperTeen in 2011.

Our home is in Cork in the south of Ireland, but we're currently on loan to Massachusetts in the US where I continue to write books about magic, ghosts, and romance, with a bit of Irish flavor.

Visit Leigh via her Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook



The Giveaway: Check out this amazing giveaway Leigh's hosting! 


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Halloween Costumes: How to Dress Up Like a Shadowhunter via Hollywood Crush

MTV's Hollywood Crush is getting Shadowhunter fans in the Halloween spirit by featuring a post on how to dress like a Shadowhunter. Complete with pictures, ideas and links to find what you're in need of, this post is a one stop shop for The Mortal Instrument Fans. 



Per Hollywood Crush:

"Looking Better in Black" isn't just a slogan for the Shadowhunters—they wear the midnight hue with aplomb while fighting the world's foes. Even better? All of these black basics can be purchased at Forever 21 (and for relatively little green!). Start off with a pair ofPintucked Moto Jeggings (complete with awesome ribbing detail) for only $19.80, then top with a flesh-flashing basic tank (revealing plenty of surface area to display your runes). Add a pair of Isabelle-approved booties (we like this pair of lace-ups) or, if you prefer comfort over couture, combat boots sans heel will also do the trick. Finish with a slick jacket (like this Faux Leather Peplum one for $34.80).
A Shadowhunter is nothing without her runes though! Buy a kohl eye pencil or black lipstick to draw the protective markings on your arms and other visible areas of skin. Cassie's website has a full array of designs for you to crib, or you can always make up your own.
The final touch is your stele—that magical tool used to draw Shadowhunter runes. For an easy, homemade solution, grab a twig off the ground or bunch together a couple of pipe cleaners and wrap in aluminum foil. And—voila!—you're ready for any Magnus BaneHalloween party!

What are you waiting for? Go grab your Shadowhunter gear! If you do dress up as a Shadowhunter this Halloween be sure to send us pictures or tweet them to us, so we can share them with fans. And don't forget to enter our friends TMI Source's 2nd Annual Shadowhunter Costume Contest. I'm looking forward to helping judge another fabulous contest. 

#Reached Challenge #4- Cross Over



Mundie Moms is part of a group of bloggers who were invited to be apart of Penguin Teen's Silk & Paper Campaign, which is actively promoting Ally Condie's upcoming release REACHED. Each week we have a challenge, and these challenges also involve you! Last week's mission was to Get Matched and add Matched book trailer to our sites, which you can grab here. The week prior to that kicked off the countdown with grabbing the REACHED countdown widget and adding it to our blogs (which you can grab here). 



This week's challenge: Cross over! Or in other words get CROSSED. You can do this by visiting the Matched Facts Tumblr, and reblogging, tweeting, posting on facebook, and repining the facts campaign. As well as embedding the CROSSED book trailer on your blog. 

Cross Roads Blog Tour Days 2: Carrie Harris / Ty Drago and Day 3: Janet Fox

Welcome to day 3 of The Cross Roads Blog Tour, hosted by author Judith Graves. Since I somehow totally spaced on yesterday's post (I am so sorry about that) welcome to day 2's post as well. Be sure to stop by the tour blog page HERE to check out the awesome line up of authors who are apart of this year's tour, as well as the bloggers who will be hosting each author. Mark your calendars for Monday, October 29th, as MM's will be hosting the Cross Roads author chat on Twitter! Trust me, you won't want to miss it. More info that will be posted soon.  I'm excited to be featuring author Amanda Ashby today on the blog. 



You list cooking as one of your favourite hobbies - along with fighting evil - what's your most famous family dish?I’m less famous for one dish than I am for a series of dishes. We throw bacon parties at the Harris household, usually in conjunction with one of the Comedy Central celebrity roasts. There’s nothing like sitting down to a meal of bacon dip, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, bacon casserole, chocolate covered bacon, and bacon maple cupcakes and watching a bunch of comedians insult David Hasselhoff. And no, I’m not making any of this up. And yes, I’m hungry for bacon now.

It's Halloween - costume or no costume? And what's your best ever disguise?
Absolutely a costume! I always dress up. One year, I was driving to a Halloween party in my slasher film cheerleader costume, complete with slit throat and all kinds of gory yuck all over me, and I passed an elderly couple on the highway, and they took one look at me and actually drove off the road! This story is only funny because no one got hurt. Once I found out about that, I was pretty proud!

You have a great website! How important are websites today for authors?
I’m so glad you like it; my web designer is a psychic and pulled those pictures straight from my head. I won’t ever play poker with him, because he’ll WIN.

I think websites are really important because people have so many choices of what to read and watch and listen to, and a good website gives you an instant feel for what to expect from an author. The minute you go to my site, you know to expect monsters and NOT to expect seriousness. And that’s really a reflection of what my books are like. I think it’s a terrific tool, not just for me to market myself to readers, but also for me AS a reader to find awesome books and then apologize to my husband for buying them.

Can you please define a whack-a-ding-hoy.
Whack-a-ding-hoy means crazy. But not just plain old garden-variety crazy, more like the kind of nutballs that either gets you committed or gets you a show on Comedy Central. I’m hoping not to be committed. And I don’t think I’d like to be on TV, but if they need someone to write a sitcom about monsters, I AM SO THERE. And I’m rambling. Why am I rambling? I like popcorn. And bacon.

And that is an example of whack-a-ding-hoy in action. Sometimes it’s easier to understand these things when you see them yourself. I AM SO HELPFUL, AREN’T I?!?

Er…yeah. Thanks for having me and for not calling the men in white coats. I really appreciate that.



Thank you Carrie for stopping by Mundie Moms today. * Thank you to Judith for supplying today's tour questions.

About the Author:


Carrie Harris is the author of Bad Taste in Boys, and the upcoming releases Bad Hair Day, and Bad Yeti. Visit Carrie via her Website | Twitter | Facebook






Undertakers - what a great concept! Why are yours so special?
That’s a hard question to answer.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t sit down intending to write a “zombie” novel.  I started with the kids.

I’ve always loved the idea of a child army, fighting a war that the adult world doesn’t know about.  The Undertakers actually grew out of a series of poorly drawn comic books I did as a kid about a group of child superheroes called “The Kid Kidets”. Yes, I spelled “cadets” wrong; I was ten.  They all had superpowers and lived in a secret base deep in the Antarctic.  And their leaders were a brother and sister team named Tom and Sharon Jefferson (I changed the spelling to “Sharyn” for the Undertakers).

Much later, when I decided to write a middle grade series, I remembered the Kid Kidets.  The Undertakers, of course, have no superpowers – and the villains they face are much nastier than anything their predecessors had to deal with.  But the concept is the same.

The point is, I started with Will, Helene, Tom, Sharyn and the rest and then I gave them the Corpses to fight.  I think that’s what makes the story work as well as it does.

You suddenly can no longer write...now what?

Writing is breathing.  Honestly, I don’t know how I’d survive if I had to give it up.  Maybe I’d become some other sort of storyteller, though I have no idea what that might look like.

Next question!  This one’s giving me the heebie-jeebies!!!

Does your day job as a business analyst provide any fodder for your fiction?
I sometimes take the names of coworkers and kill them off in my books!  For the record, I always tell them ahead of time and we all have a lot of fun with it.  James Dye is a project manager I’ve known for years – a truly great guy.  For fun, I bump him off in the first chapter of Queen of the Dead.  He gets his head ripped off by the title character!

Aside from that, I tend to keep both jobs pretty separate in my head.  Very different skillsets!

What are you working on now?
I’m about halfway through the second draft of the third Undertakers book.  The working title is “Capitol Corpses”, though I’m not in love with it. I’m kind of leaning more toward “The Corpse Eater”.  There’s a monster in it with a taste for Corpse flesh!  But that’s enough spoilers! : )


Thank you TY for stopping by Mundie Moms today. * Thank you to Judith for supplying today's tour questions.

About the Author:



Ty is the author of The Undertakers Series. You can visit Ty via his Website | Facebook.



************



SIRENS is a pair of love stories, a gangster and a ghost. We're in! Could you please give us the one-paragraph blurb to really reel us in.
“The “Roaring Twenties” was the age of flappers and bootleggers. Josephine Winter, seventeen, is sent to live with relatives in New York City after her bootlegging father receives a threat, but bookish Jo harbors her own secrets. While she finds friendship with lively Louise O’Keefe and romance with sweet jazz musician Charlie, she also comes to realize that the reason she’s sent into the city has everything to do with what she may know. Haunted by the spirit of her missing brother, Jo uncovers a nest of family lies that threaten everyone she loves, and Lou, in the thrall of the dangerous, seductive gangster Daniel Connor, is both Jo’s best friend and potential enemy. As Jo unlocks dark mysteries and Lou’s eyes are opened, the girls’ treacherous paths intertwine. In this “noire romance,” Jo and Lou together will have to stand up to Connor in order to find their hearts and hang onto their souls in the decade of decadence.”

What was the coolest thing you saw during your deep sea dive?
Oo – this is awesome. The submersible I rode in didn’t have great battery power, so we had to be kind of conservative with it, and that included using the lights outside our individual portholes. So the lights were out for a long time as we descended (which took about 3 hours). Somewhere close to the bottom I was given the okay to turn on my lights.
Well, you talk about aliens...we have them, right there in the oceans. Spirals and whirligigs, ladders and flagella – there were things floating outside that porthole that no one has ever seen before, nor is likely to see unless they go the way I did, because those delicate creatures would never make it up to the surface. How do they survive the great pressures at the ocean bottom? How do they cope without light? How do they create bioluminescence that makes them look like moving fireworks?
We have many mysteries yet to uncover right here on our own sweet planet.

What is the best writing advice you've ever received?
Never give up. Never surrender. (Ten extra points if you can identify where that came from!) Seriously – persistence is the key to creating something beautiful. Because with every new project your work gets better. So stick with it. Never give up.

You're a superhero fighting for truth, justice and the creative way. What writing "villains" would you banish with your mighty pen? (and what will your costume look like?)
Costume first (always dress for the occasion): spandex, green. Head to toe. Now, those villains? Wait...didn’t they fall into blithering idiots when I walked out in the costume? I mean, really!



Thank you Janet for stopping by Mundie Moms today. * Thank you to Judith for supplying today's tour questions.

About the Author:


Janet Fox is the author of Faithful, Forgiven and her upcoming release, Sirens. You can visit Janet via her Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook.





The Tour:




Each day of The Crossroads Blog Tour, a new research question will be revealed on The Crossroad Blog Tour main page:http://judithgraves.com/events/the-crossroads-tour/crossroads-2012/ and each day the answer to that question will be found within one of the different blog posts by Crossroads Tour authors. Your job is to get the question, read the blog posts, and collect all answers by the end of the tour.

Answers are to be emailed to judithgraves @ ymail dot com by October 28th at MIDNIGHT. Winner of the grand prize will be announced on OCTOBER 31st – HALLOWEEN.

The Giveaway:




The GRAND PRIZE you’re vying for? A brand new KINDLE, preloaded with a title from each of the participating Crossroads Blog Tour Authors. That’s right folks, a free KINDLE and 13 free EBOOKS!

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