Mundie Moms

Monday, September 10, 2012

Send Me Sign Trailer Premiere Party

Welcome to the Send Me A Sign trailer premiere party! Today Bloomsbury Teens and Mundie Moms are teaming to celebrate the trailer premiere for Tiffany Schmidt's upcoming release, SEND ME A SIGN, which will be out on October 2nd, 2012. Here's a little bit about the book:



Mia is always looking for signs. A sign that she should get serious with her soccer-captain boyfriend. A sign that she'll get the grades to make it into an Ivy-league school. One sign she didn't expect to look for was: "Will I survive cancer?" It's an answer her friends would never understand, prompting Mia to keep her illness a secret. The only one who knows is her lifelong best friend, Gyver, who is poised to be so much more. Mia is determined to survive, but when you have so much going your way, there is so much more to lose. From debut author Tiffany Schmidt comes a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting story of one girl's search for signs of life in the face of death.


Check out this FABULOUS TRAILER!!!! 



Isn't that a great trailer? I can't wait to read this book! 

What did you think of the trailer? Please share your thoughts with us about the trailer below in the comments. 

GIVEAWAY:

No party is complete without some GIVEAWAYS!! Thank you to Bloomsbury Teen we have some awesome giveaways to share.

Grand Prize: 1 signed first edition of SEND ME A SIGN, 1 additional Bloomsbury ARC, 1 preserved four leaf clover,  and 1 necklace from the trailer

* 5 Prize Winners will receive One Fall 2012 or Winter 2013 ‘hot’ Bloomsbury ARC and 1 preserved four leaf clover

To enter to win, please fill out the form below:

Be sure to follow the Bloomsbury Teen page to enter to win additional prizes between now and 10/2.

The Goddess Legacy Blog Tour: Guide to the Gods


I'm thrilled to be kicking of Kismet's The Goddess Legacy blog tour today. Aimee Carter's series has been on I've really enjoyed reading (you read my reviews for The Goddess Test here and Goddess Interrupted here). The Goddess Test Series includes:

* The Goddess Test, book 1 in April 2011
* The Goddess Hunt, book 1.5 (novella) March 2012
* Goddess Interrupted, book 2 in March 2012
* The Goddess Legacy, book 2.5 in July 2012, which is a collection of Aimee's novellas for the series
* The Goddess Inheritance, book 3, coming in 2013

Today's stop is featuring The Goddess Legacy. Here's a little bit more about the book:


Purchase from: Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, Indiebound

For millennia we’ve caught only glimpses of the lives and loves of the gods and goddesses on Olympus. Now Aimée Carter pulls back the curtain on how they became the powerful, petty, loving and dangerous immortals that Kate Winters knows.

Calliope/Hera represented constancy and yet had a husband who never matched her faithfulness….

Ava/Aphrodite was the goddess of love and yet commitment was a totally different deal….

Persephone was urged to marry one man, yet longed for another….

James/Hermes loved to make trouble for others-but never knew true loss before….

Henry/Hades’s solitary existence had grown too wearisome to continue. But meeting Kate Winters gave him a new hope….

Five original novellas of love, loss and longing and the will to survive throughout the ages.

*******

I love Greek mythology, and one of the things I've enjoyed about Aimee's series is getting to read about her spin on Greek mythology, and getting to read about the Greek Gods. Today's stop includes this handy Guide of Gods. 


That's not all I have. Before I tell you about today's giveaway, I also have a quote from the book to share with you guys.


About the Author:


Aimée Carter was born and raised in Michigan, where she currently resides. She started writing at age eleven and later attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a degree in screen arts and cultures. Currently she spends her time continuing with The Goddess Test series and working on new projects. You can tweet her at @aimee_carter or catch updates on her website.

You can visit Aimee on her:  website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads



The Giveaway:

Today I've got two giveaways!!

For the 1st giveaway, One lucky winner will be a copy of The Goddess Legacy! To ENTER that giveaway, just leave me a comment on the with your email address to be entered to win. (only 1 comment per person is allowed. Extra comments will be deleted. If you leave a second comment with your email address (because you forgot to leave it after your first comment) that will be counted with your original comment).

For the 2nd giveaway: to be entered to win the blog tour Grand Prize pack (this giveaway will be featured on each stop of the blog tour), which features everything you see in the picture above, please be sure to fill out the form below. 


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck to everyone! Be sure to follow the entire tour here:


Monday, September 10th – Mundie Moms
Wednesday, September 12th – Harlequin Tour Stop
Friday, September 14th –   Me, My Shelf and I 
Monday, September 17th – Blook Girl
Wednesday, September 19th – Book Shelf Banter
Friday, September 21st – Tynga’s Reviews
Monday, September 24th – YA Bibiliophile 
Wednesday, September 26th – Kindle and Me
Friday, September 28th – Fire and Ice

Demon's Blog Tour: Author Interview & Giveaway



I'm excited to be the next stop on Cedar Fort's Demons blog tour. Today's features is a visit from author Heather Frost and a giveaway! 


Thank you for stopping by Mundie Moms today Heather. Congratulations on  your upcoming release. Could you tell us a little about the Seers Trilogy? 
       
The Seers trilogy focuses on Kate Bennett, a “normal” high school senior that finds herself quite suddenly thrust into the world of Guardians, Demons, and Seers. Because of her unique ability to see auras, and thus discern between mortals and immortals, she has become a target. It’s up to her Guardians to protect her from the encroaching Demons, who are intent on destroying everything she loves.  In “Demons”, book two of the trilogy, the plot really intensifies and the stakes become higher as the Demons become more and more obsessed with adding Kate to their collection of Seers.

 What was one of your favorite scenes to write and why?

 I LOVED writing the climax. Obviously a can’t really go into detail, but I finally got to reveal all sorts of secrets, and really deepen the plot. Kate comes face to face with the Demons Lord himself, and one of the character’s won’t make it out alive. It was really draining for me, emotionally, but what a high!

What authors have been influential on you as a writer?

 Phew, every author I’ve every read has helped me somehow, but J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Bronte taught me a lot about crafting believable, lovable characters. And I firmly believe that the characters make or break a story, so I really put my emphasis on building realistic characters.

 If you were going on a trip and could only take three books with you, what three books would you take?

 I would take Jane Eyre (one of my all-time favorites!), I’d take Tiger’s Curse (which is next on my to-read list), and then I’d probably grap up Matched (which I want to reread before the last book in the trilogy comes out.)

If there was one author you could spend the day (currently living or one from the past), who would you pick and why?
    
 Today, I’d love to talk with J.K. Rowling. I just really admire her, and I absolutely love Harry Potter. It would be awesome to spend  a day just discussing books, writing, characters, and Scotland. (I’m madly in love with Europe!)

What's one thing you need when you're writing (ie caffeine, music etc)?
   
I definitely need music. But I also have to have a pad of paper and pen, even though I write at the computer most often. I don’t even use the real paper all that often, but I like to have something to scribble on, just in case!



About The Book: 
Published by: Cedar Fort Books
To Be Released on: 9/1/12
Purchase Demons from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Kate's life is far from normal. She can see Auras, her boyfriend is immortal, and her powers make her a target. But now that the Demon Lord is hunting her, things are about to go from dangerous to truly deadly. Packed with action, mind-blowing plot twists, and characters you can't get enough of, this is a fast-paced, heart-pounding read from cover to cover.

About The Author:
You can visit Heather via her: Website | Facebook | GoodReads  

The Giveaway
Thank you to Cedar Fort books I have 1 copy of DEMONS to giveaway to one lucky blog tour follower. To enter, please fill out the form below. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cassie Clare: Clockwork Prince & Noticing Things: answers and spoilers!


This post is one I've taken from Cassie's most recent tumblr post. This is one that pertains to Clockwork Prince and is FULL OF SPOILERS! If you've not read CP yet, please be warned. Cassie is answering some fan questions and explains her answers below. The entire post below this is from Cassie and I've linked to her original post below. 

From Cassie's post:


Clockwork Prince and noticing things: answers — and spoilers!

SPOILERS FOR CLOCKWORK PRINCE BELOW.

writingwithink asked you: Obviously everyone has noticed that Jem doesn’t notice Will’s feelings for Tessa. But, why doesn’t Jem notice? It’s not like the way Will looks at Tessa, or vice versa, is the way people who are ‘just friends’ look at each other. And, Jem is Will’s parabatai/brother/best friend. Jem has spent the last five years being Will’s best friend, the only one that Will allowed to love him. Also, why didn’t Will notice Jem’s love? I know Jem was been busy with proposing, and Will with his curse, but…

I’m answering this here with a repost of previous answers I’ve given to this question because 1) most of the question answering I did was just after Clockwork Prince came out, and so a lot of people I think skipped them, because they hadn’t read the books yet and 2) At the time they were all under cut tags. So, on the topic of people not noticing things, some of you may have read this before:

Why doesn’t Jem notice how Will feels about Tessa? What a rat he is. 

I think that, when presented with a really painful situation like the one at the end of Clockwork Prince, there is a sort of natural desire to assign blame. It makes it less painful to imagine that what’s going on is someone’s fault — Tessa’s selfish! Will is entitled! Jem is blind! — than to think that these are basically decent people trying hard to be good, and they get screwed anyway. Because one is a moral lesson (always a bit comforting, as it offers the illusion of control) and the other says life is a agonizing lottery of tragedy and chance (not comforting at all.)

A lot of people comment that Jem should have realized Will loved Tessa because in Clockwork Angel he says that he noticed that Will thinks she’s pretty. But  Jem noticing Will noticing a pretty girl is hardly equivalent to Jem noticing Will being in deathless love. Will notices pretty girls all the time. Lasciviousness is in fact, part of his false persona. Jem noting that Will thinks Tessa is pretty in CA is not about him commenting on Will’s feelings so much as it is him getting confirmation for his own. [Sometimes, my husband offers, when you think a girl is a babe, you want confirmation from your buddy that she is, in fact, as babelicious as you believe.]

Jem is an observant guy. But he is under no illusions that he knows everything about Will, and he is frank about that. From Clockwork Angel, when he tells Tessa he has no idea why Will won’t speak to his family:

““And you’ve never asked him why?”
“If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me,” Jem said. “You asked why I think he tolerates me better than other people. I’d imagine it’s precisely because I’ve never asked him why.”

Nor does Will think Jem knows everything about him.

“I don’t know,” Tessa said. “I’m not sure anyone does understand you, except possibly Jem.”
“Jem doesn’t understand me,” Will said. “He cares for me— like a brother might. It’s not the same thing.”

What Jem offers Will, what makes their relationship unique and workable, is precisely this: unconditional love without demand, perfect trust without perfect understanding. Will’s statement that Jem doesn’t understand him is not a criticism of Jem. He does not want Jem to understand him, because he doesn’t want his curse understood. He deliberately lies and hides things from Jem, and Jem knows it and accepts it because he loves him, but it’s a far stretch from that to “Jem ought to be able to read Will’s mind.”


Certainly Jem is able to tell that Will is in no good mood, but Will is often in no good mood, and much of Will’s upset during Clockwork Prince can be put down to his awful near-encounter with his family and his panic over their well-being. Because a lot of it is about that, and Jem would not be incorrect in assuming so. There seems to be an assumption here that Jem and Tessa ought to be able to see through Will like glass, even though Will says over and over that he isn’t interested in Tessa. If Jem and Will are really all that close, the assumption seems to be, surely Jem would be able to read Will’s mind and see he loves Tessa? But the flip side of that assumption is: since Jem and Will truly know each other, Will also knows exactly how to lie to Jem and make it stick. As for poor Tessa, we’ve been over this: there is no reason to assume a guy who repeatedly says he isn’t interested in you or commitment is not serious. Tessa made the choice she did with the information she had to hand: you can’t make choices based on things you don’t know.

[Also, if the suggestion is that parabatai ought to be able to read each other’s mind: why is Will so dense as to go off and drug himself up at an opium den and have no idea what that would do to Jem? Why does Will not notice that Jem loves Tessa, given that Will is bending every last atom of his will to concealing his love for Tessa, but Jem isn’t bothering? More on that below.]

And lastly, it’s not like Jem doesn’t have his own stuff going on. He’s dying, and dependent on a drug whose continued availability is limited. He’s in love with a girl, but knows that being a dying man, he doesn’t have a lot to offer. When she unexpectedly accepts his proposal, he’s joyous. Meanwhile, the last time he saw Will, Will was in a terrific mood (as he’d just had the curse lifted.) So Jem’s sitting there, basically overwhelmingly happy for probably the first time in his life since his parents died, and when Will comes in, he’s supposed to flip like a switch and suddenly care about nothing but the possibility that Will might be unhappy despite the fact he hasn’t mentioned it and was just fine an hour ago?

C’mon, let the guy have his moment of happiness. After all, as we know, life is a meaningless lottery of tragedy and chance.

Why doesn’t Will notice how Jem feels about Tessa? What a rat he is.

This is a bit more difficult to explain (in my mind) than why Jem didn’t notice Will loved Tessa (though I get asked that more!) — not because there’s a not a valid reasons but because it isn’t as concrete as “Will was hiding it.” Jem wasn’t hiding it. And yet, Will genuinely didn’t realize. So, why?

I don’t want to say “Will doesn’t think of Jem as a threat” because that implies all sorts of things — that people don’t see Jem as masculine (not true) or that Jem is some sort of beta or sidekick for Will, which isn’t true either. However, what is true is that for five years Jem has been a source for Will of only good things — in some ways, his only source of good things. Jem has protected him. Jem has loved him. Jem has had faith in him when nobody else did.

In a lot of ways Will isn’t capable of imagining that Jem might be the cause of pain for him (in any other way than Jem himself dying.) In his mind, Jem’s a part of him. It would be like him imagining that his own left hand might suddenly start punching him in the face. That’s why when he finds out that Jem has proposed to Tessa, his first reaction is disbelief: “Jem? *My* Jem?” Jem is his, his parabatai, his other half, his blood brother. Jem is not separate enough from him, in Will’s mind, to take independent action that would be shocking or surprising to Will.

Will is also completely caught up with and distracted by his own circumstances — desperately trying to get the curse off himself, protect his family, protect Tessa (from himself) protect Jem (from running out of drugs.) He is stretched about as thin as you could be. Under normal circumstances, he would probably also have noticed Jessamine was sneaking around, but there’s too much going on: he just doesn’t have the room for it.

This doesn’t make him a bad or selfish person. His circumstances are desperate and extreme. They require his full attention. But he himself thinks it, at the end of the book: “Will had never considered  [Jem’s romantic happiness]. He had dwelled on whether Jem was safe, whether he was surviving, but not if he was happy.”

Being too caught up in whether your best friend is going to die to consider whether they’re into the same girl as you doesn’t make you a bad person; in this case, Will’s human frailties are far out of proportion to the level to which he is punished for them. But then, this isn’t a morality tale: it’s the messy story of three good people trying to do right, caught up in an impossible situation. The desire to lay blame on one of them is reasonable, but I think the thing about it that makes it upsetting is precisely that nobody really is to blame.

My .02, anyway!

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