Mundie Moms

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Unidentified Snippet



“I don’t know why I ever helped you.”
“Because you like broken things.” 

Blog Tour/Book Review: Point of Origin by Amanda Havard


My second post in today's The Survivors: Point of Origin blog tour is my review for Amanda's sophomore book, and sequel to The Survivors (you can read my review here). You can read my guest post and enter to win a signed copy of both books, as well as enter to an iPod nano on my first tour post here

Published by: Chafie Press LLC
To Be Released on: June 12th, 2012
Source: Signed ARC from author at ALA-midwinter
3.5 stars: I Enjoyed It/ It's A Good Read
Pre-Order from: Amazon 
Add to Goodreads

The winter is upon us. The Survivors are in chaos. The war is coming.
One year ago, Sadie Matthau was living among humans, existing as one of them. But now she wakes each morning in a house in the Survivors City, listening to the invocations and insults of her family members as they cope with their new future. A war. Rogue abandoners turned monsters. Sadie and the icy Winters living in their midst, bringing the outside world in.
The Survivors: Point of Origin is Sadie s quest to save her family. But can she find what she is looking for when she can barely stomach the Winters wintry demeanor and finds herself distracted by Cole Hardwick s warm heart? Will she be able to uncover her family s history even as the elders grip tightens around her throat? In an action packed ride full of magic and misery, terror and triumph, Sadie Matthau seeks the Survivors beginning just in time to face her end. -quoted from Amanda's site
Thinking I'd get many of the questions I had after finishing The Survivors answered, I picked this book immediately after finishing it and was surprising thrown further into Amanda's incredibly intriguing paranormal world. Amanda doesn't tread lightly with this sequel. She throws in more twists, uncovers more secrets and introduces readers to a few new characters who end up playing some big roles in this series. The romance, the action, and the impending war added uncertainty and a little bit suspense to the series. I liked being able to get a more in-depth look into the role the Salem Witch trials play in this series, and particularly in Sadie's life, as well as getting to understand more of the paranormal lore through Sadie's research.

Sadie's constant curiosity and need for answers leads to some extremely interesting finds. I loved feeling like I was getting what was going on at the same time she was. Without Sadie there'd be a lot big pieces missing from the complex puzzle that's behind the impending war. Despite Sadie's book smarts, this time around I was surprised with how much Sadie irritated me. Don't get me wrong, she's still a good character, but I got frustrated with the way she handles some "situations" in this book. I get that she uncovers a lot, and finds out some surprising secrets, but her running off when things got hard really got on my nerves. I felt she regressed a bit as a character during those scenes. Then there's time I felt like I understood her struggle with trying to fit in w/ her immortal family and that of wanting nothing to do with them and wanting to be in the human world. I got how that effected her and some of the choices she makes. I as a reader understood the war that was constantly going on in her head over who she is and what her heart really wants.

The character chemistry definitely heats up in this book. I seriously love Everett! He's definitely won me over, and I admire him for fighting his true nature to make things work with Sadie. His protectiveness and overall concern for her is admirable and at the same time a little over protective, but given Everett's nature it's understandable. Again, I adore Everett's family as well. His brother Mark is another fabulous character I liked seeing more of in this book. I was surprised to see the role that Cole continues to play in this book, and I couldn't laugh out loud over a scene with him, Everett, Mark and Sadie. Cole is again that southern gentleman I first met in The Survivors, and he definitely brings something different to the table for Sadie.

I'm not really sure what I was excepting with this sequel, but I certainly wasn't excepting some of the events that took place to happen. Getting to dig deeper into Sadie's family's lore, seeing how the characters grow and changed, and how all the twists and secrets fit into the over all complex mystery that's behind all that's going on in this sequel was definitely engaging and kept me glued to the pages of this book. I wanted to know more. Amanda definitely brought out a few emotions from me I wasn't excepting to have towards a few characters. I might have mentally yelled at a few characters for doing some of the things they do. Again, there's characters you'll love and characters you're going to love to hate in this series. Amanda does a great job at giving them each a purpose in this book. That ending killed me and now I'm wishing I had book 3 in my hands. I need more answers!

The Survivors: Point of Origin Blog Tour: Author Interview & Giveaway



I'm thrilled to be kicking off Amanda Havard's The Survivors: Point of Origin blog tour. I had the privilege of meeting Amanda at ALA-Midwinter and I have to say, she's fabulous! If you ever get the chance to meet her, I highly recommend doing so. I'm even more excited to have her on the blog today! Along with Amanda's guest post, I'm giving away a signed copy of both of her books, along with an iPod nano fully loaded with both of her playlists!




Should you find yourself on my Facebook fan page and wonder about my personal interests, this is the list you’d find:


Other than writing? Alternate forms of storytelling. Music, music, music. Reading. Style and the world of fashion. Pilates. Cars. Cooking. Obscure mythology. Comic book heroes. The back table at Fido. Nashville, Tennessee. Edgy European luxe magazines. Abstract or pop-art interpretations of red roses (a la Valentino). Moleskine notebooks. Talking. Listening. Technology. Rule-breaking. Sunglasses. Thai food. Runway photographs. Oaxaca and the odd beauty of El Dia de los Muertos. The Pacific Ocean (more specifically, the Monterey Bay). Red lipstick. Buying more books than I have time to read. Theories of education and human development. People-watching. Blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

Blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Or as someone recently put it in an article they wrote about me, somewhere between reality and fiction. That one gets me. I don’t totally recall when I wrote that as I am sure it was somewhere in the madness of revising a book and getting it ready to share with the world — also known as giving a sizeable slice of your heart away — but I guess I love the honesty. Those are all the things that interest me most in the world, and if you’ve read either of the Survivors books, then you know those are things that interest my characters too. (Okay, maybe nobody does Pilates, but other than that.) The places I love are the places they live. The powers they have are the ones I found most interesting in comic books and supernatural stories growing up. Their signatures are things I’d notice on someone. We share a common bond.


It’s not that I can’t write characters whose lives are so different from my own or whose interests are so opposite mine so much as it is that I choose not to. At some point not too long ago, something must have switched on in my brain. I was likely asleep at the time — or should have been — but there came a point when I started letting the fringes of my own reality give way to the fiction that lives in my brain. It is the best choice I have ever made.


In 2009, when I wrote The Survivors in an infamous 27-days-while-in-grad-school, Sadie took hold of my soul. I’m not sure if it’s when I decided to put her in a wedding in Tupelo that I, myself, had just been in or perhaps when I decided to give her a Twitter account — and started using it — that I let go and became her, but somewhere in that summer, it happened. And after her, it was every other character. Their obsessions and guilty pleasures, their bullheadedness and their charm, their fashion and footwear, it all became a part of my life. Now it’s not to say I never liked Audi R8s or Burberry Prorsum leather jackets before, but since Mark did I loved them like they were a part of me. Like I had reason to. And it’s not to say that I wasn’t highly interested in obscure and obvious mythology alike before Sadie, but since she had a need to know more, suddenly I did too. My stories and my self have merged into one being. And ever since we produced an interactive story app of The Survivors, even my means of storytelling and my self have merged. We are one inseparable piece now, the story and I, and so you take us all or nothing.

It is no wonder that I now do the talking as six Survivors characters on Twitter, and have for years. I am, they are… one in the same.

Years ago, I read a Sylvia Plath quote that went like this, “I write because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” This couldn’t be truer of me. I don’t want to write; I have to. I don’t hope to tell stories; they tell themselves in my mind. I’m one of those writers who lives and breathes it, whose story doesn’t ever leave her mind. I have decided to live fully invested in a world that is similar to my own but isn’t. I am not afraid of embracing the way the world brings me the story, and I am always grateful. 

I don’t think what I’m doing is particularly special or even unique. No, instead, I can just tell I’m someone who’s let go and is unafraid of what madness my mind might conjure. I am simply someone who likes to live in the fantasy space between my life and the ones I create. I pay attention to the world around me, let my everyday interests influence my writing and my writing influence my everyday interests. And when I stop and wonder about something, I wonder about it through the lens of every fictional character rolling around in my head. And why wouldn’t I? I want to be them, don’t I? How else would I tell a story in their voices?

There’s a bit of madness living this way, but I hope it shows in my stories in the best way imaginable. This is my life now. The life of a storyteller.

I’ll leave you with one more now, a quote from the tragically talented Alexander McQueen that has become something of a mantra for me.


“There is no way back for me now. I am going to take you

on journeys you’ve never dreamed were possible.”





THE SURVIVORS (Book 1) Synopsis:
In 1692, when witch trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead. Fourteen of them survived.
The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family’s sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back.
On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she’s sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality. After all…
How do you kill a Survivor?
The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie’s life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you’ll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself.
And it is only the beginning...

POINT OF ORIGIN Synopsis:
The winter is upon us. The Survivors are in chaos. The war is coming. One year ago, Sadie Matthau was living among humans, existing as one of them. But now she wakes each morning in a house in the Survivors City, listening to the invocations and insults of her family members as they cope with their new future. A war. Rogue abandoners turned monsters. Sadie and the icy Winters living in their midst, bringing the outside world in. The Survivors: Point of Origin is Sadie's quest to save her family. But can she find what she is looking for when she can barely stomach the Winters wintry demeanor and finds herself distracted by Cole Hardwick's warm heart? Will she be able to uncover her family's history even as the elders grip tightens around her throat? In an action packed ride full of magic and misery, terror and triumph, Sadie Matthau seeks the Survivors beginning just in time to face her end.

Immersedition: 
Chafie Creative released the Immersedition, a revolutionary app for Fiction, in which THE SURVIVOR SERIES by Amanda Havard was the pilot edition. More than a regular or even enhanced eBook, the Immersedition was crafted specifically to embrace the possibilities of interactivity inside a novel. You can see more about the Immersedition HERE.
Amanda and Music:
Not only a brilliant writer, Amanda Havard is a musician and songwriter and has written several original songs which are on each book's soundtrack. You can see the videos of three of the songs HERE.

Author Bio:
Amanda Havard has been telling stories since before she could write. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, where her first book was published in her elementary school library at age 7. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Vanderbilt University. She currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her baby grand piano and more story ideas than she could tell in one lifetime.
Links:
Amanda's Website: Http://amandahavard.com
Follow Amanda on Twitter: @AmandaHavard
Follow Amanda on Facebook: Amanda Havard
Follow THE SURVIVOR SERIES on Facebook: The Survivors
The Giveaway:

Thank you to Amanda, I have a signed copy of both of Amanda's books I'm giving away, The Survivors and Point of Origin, along with an iPod Nano fully loaded with the soundtracks from books 1 & 2. 

To enter, please fill out the form below.
- 1 entry per person
- US & Canadian residents only
- Must be 13 yrs & older to enter (under are required to have a parent/guardian's permission)
- This giveaway will end on June 19th, 2012

Book Review: The Survivors by Amanda Havard


Published by: Chafie Press LLC
Released on: March 29th, 2011
Source: signed arc from author at ALA-Midwinter
4 stars: I Enjoyed It
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks
Add to Goodreads

In 1692, when witch trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead. Fourteen of them survived.
The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family’s sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back.
On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she’s sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality. After all…
How do you kill a Survivor?
The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie’s life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you’ll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself.
And it is only the beginning..

The Survivors is the first book in a promising series with the same name. Full of unique paranormal lore and a variety of paranormal characters with a wide range of abilities, Amanda Havard does a great job at introducing readers to her intriguing world. I loved that this series starts out with the Salem Witch trials. There's been little YA books that have their stories tied to this historical event, and I thought Amanda did an incredible job with creating a series that starts off with this horrific event. Though The Survivors doesn't go into details about the Salem Witch trials, the characters that emerge in this book are children who accused of being witches and driven out of their village a couple weeks after the trail was over. 

Being a huge paranormal fan, I really enjoyed the wide range of paranormal characters that are apart of Sadie's story. They cover everything from Witches, Vampires, Shape-Shifters and more are. Though they're deemed "out casts" or aren't considered real in the human world, they all live within in their own family groups trying to blend into a world they've never been accepted into, with little to no human contact for the most part. I loved how their old world views clashed with the world's more modern day views. Being an immortal and hiding out of view from humans since the 1600's would take a toll on me. Luckily Sadie isn't a character who sits by idly and allows those leaders of her "family" to make all the decisions for her. She puts herself out there and wants to learn more about who she is, her family's history, how The Survivors, whom are immortal, can be killed. In doing so she goes to place that's forbidden. 

I liked that while The Survivors all live within the human world, they find blending in with humans sinful.   The fact that Sadie doesn't let that deter her makes me admire her all the more. She has this fierce determination about her that I loved. She's definitely a strong willed character, and someone I enjoyed getting to know. I admire her independence, her quest for answers, and her ability to live among humans no matter how hard it is. A character who matches Sadie's personality well is her romantic interest Everett. They have this sweet, innocent romance that at times made me want to push them together and tell them to just make out already. I will say I respected Everett and Sadie's strong values and their ability to stick to them. Everett is someone I'm definitely looking forward to getting to know more about. The twist about his family that's revealed towards the end of the book is great! 

Aside from the characters, I really enjoyed the historical references and the paranormal history and lore that Amanda created. I loved being able to travel all over the world with Sadie in her quest for answers. Her determination to find out more about her history, how Survivors can be destroyed and so forth as she visits different places looking into the paranormal myths present in each location, added some of the excitement into the story line. I enjoyed The Survivors and I thought Amanda did a great job at laying the foundation for the rest of the series, but I felt like something was missing from the book. Given what some of the characters are, I had excepted a little bit more action in this story than there was. I'm looking forward to Point of Origin, and finding out what's in store for Sadie and family next. 

Guest Post: Dark Readers on Cassandra Clare's COLS UK Signing at Foyle's

I'm so excited about today's guest post from Dark Readers! She was one of the lucky TMI fans who attended Cassie's UK signing this past Saturday at Foyles. Here's a lovely recap from the signing:

 
So where shall I start? Let's start with the beginning. So the lovely Neil who works at Foyles (UK bookstore who hosted the event) was kind enough to give me free tickets to see Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson at the Stratford Royal theatre. It's a lovely theatre right next to the Olympic stadium in London. When I arrived I was very excited! Because the last time I saw Cassandra and Maureen was late last year. I missed their banter and Cassandra is such a lovely lady it was nice to be in her presence again!

 
When I got there the queue there was already a queue. Some with some awesome t-shirts and some with runes Painted on there hands. I knew I was in the right place! Once we got into the actual theatre I learned that I and some fellow bloggers had reserved seating (Front row) we were surprised and delighted and took our seats!


 

 Maureen Introduced Cassadra in of course a wacky way! She introduced her from the top of the theatre! Everyone was cheering it was a great atmosphere! Cassandra was wearing an awesome blue dress that totally matched the lovely hot weather we were having. It was a great Q&A. Topics came up such as Magnus movie casting and how they are NOT auditioning anyone but Asian actors and how Cassandra wanted to keep the ethnicity of her characters the same because Actors in Hollywood especially none white ones usually get cast in the same roles and she wanted to change that which we absolutely love her for. Other things came up such as incidents in Hyde park with duck pie and Ducks! And reasons Will and Jem don't like them.
 

We were laughing through out! The people who asked questions got cool Mortal Instrument styled gifts. I asked a question but I can't actually remember what I asked!! But I do remember I got this awesome HEAL/PAINLESS rune key chain from Cassandra! One funny moment I remember is Maureen giving me the keychain she said To me "I remember you. I sat next to you" I was "awhhh" inside. She was referring to last year when we sat next to each other at a harper collins event and started talking about Misfits!! Also the hilarious Sarah Rees Brennan Was there!

Other things were discussed including spoilers from City Of Lost Souls, favourite books, London, strong female characters, Sebastian, kittens. Cassandra's new series, Chemistry auditions for the movie and great news that in the back of Clockwork Princess there will be a family tree of all the families including Mortal instruments and Infernal Devices, so if you guys were ever confused about characters this is going to help you! After the Q&A we all queued up to get our books signed!

Cassandra and Maureen are as lovely as ever, and check out all my signed books woo!!
 

It was a great day and had lots of laughs and insight into Maureen and Cassandra's crazy genius brains! Also want to say thanks to Mundie Moms for letting me guest post of their ever so awesome blog!

Twitter Tuesday - Hourglass for $1.99


What a great way to start of your beach/pool reading -- Hourglass by Myra McEntire is $1.99 for the Kindle edition.

I know -- NO WAY. But yes, indeed, it is. If you're on the fence about spending the money, read Katie's 5-star review here. I, too, loved it except well, Katie and I disagree on our team choices. I'm Team Michael for all the obvious yummy heroic traits. She's Team Kaleb for all the obvious hello-I'm-a-broken-boy-and-boy-am-I-in-need-of-someone-who-understands-me traits.

Don't you think you need to see why we disagree? If you're in the mood for time travel, action and ah yes, romance get it for your kindle or your smart phone and decide which team your prefer.

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