Loss Blog Tour: Guest Post by author Jackie Morse Kessler

I'm thrilled to be the next stop in Jackie Morse Kessler's LOSS blog tour! Today's post is a guest post from Jackie herself talking about LOSS and what inspired her to write a story about bullying, sickness and loss.

Bullying, Sickness, and Loss

By Jackie Morse Kessler

When I wrote Hunger, the book looked at eating disorders and Famine—capital F, as in the Black Rider of the Apocalypse. A rather straightforward match, no? Anorexics starve themselves; people starve in a famine.

When I wrote Rage, the book paired self-jury with War. Also straightforward, especially when the main character is a cutter and War has a big freaking sword.

LOSS, which is Pestilence’s book, breaks that straightforward mold. Before I started writing it, some readers guessed that it would look at drug addiction. Nope. LOSS focuses on bullying (with a subfocus on Alzheimer’s). No, there’s no clear-cut connection between bullying and Pestilence…at least, not on the surface.

But if you look deeper, I think it’s valid calling bullying a disease. According to CyberMentors, 1 million kids are bullied every week. That sounds like an epidemic to me.

Heaven knows this isn’t something new. When I was a kid, it was shrugged off as one of those “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” things. But today, more and more people are talking about bullying—and the more that it’s talked about, the more likely it is that people will learn how to better handle it. I’m a big fan of talking about issues instead of burying them in the sand and ignoring them.

Remember, the only things that go away if you ignore them are your teeth. J

Published by: Graphia

To Be Released on: March 20th, 2012

Pre-Order LOSS from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Fifteen-year-old Billy Ballard is the kid that everyone picks on, from the school bullies to the teachers. But things change drastically when Death tells Billy he must stand in as Pestilence, the White Rider of the Apocalypse. Now armed with a Bow that allows him to strike with disease from a distance, Billy lashes out at his tormentors...and accidentally causes an outbreak of meningitis. Horrified by his actions, Billy begs Death to take back the Bow. For that to happen, says Death, Billy must track down the real White Rider—who is lost in his memories.

In his search, Billy travels through White Rider’s life: from ancient Phrygia, where the man called King Mita agrees to wear the White Rider’s Crown, to Sherwood Forest, where Pestilence figures out how to cheat Death; from the docks of Alexandria, where cartons of infested grain are being packed onto a ship that will carry the plague, to the Children’s Crusade in France—all the way to what may be the end of the world. When Billy finally finds the White Rider, the teen convinces the man to return to the real world.

But now the insane White Rider plans to unleash something awful on humanity—something that could make the Black Death look like a summer cold. Billy has a choice: he can live his life and pretend he doesn’t know what’s coming, or he can challenge the White Rider for his Crown. Does one bullied teenager have the strength to stand his ground—and the courage to save the world?

Thank you to Jackie for stopping by the blog today!!

You can follow Jackie on her Website | Blog | Twitter

You can follow the entire blog tour here

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

One lucky commenter below will win a small cover poster of LOSS and will be entered to in the grand prize drawing! The grand prize winner will receive signed copies of HUNGER, RAGE and LOSS- and will get to name a character in BREATH, the fourth book in the Riders of the Apocalypse series. The grand prize winner will be picked on Sunday April 1st, 2012.

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Good luck to everyone! Stop back by later this morning to read my review of LOSS.