Hello & welcome to the first stop in Penguin Teen's EARTHBOUND blog tour! I'm so thrilled to be apart of the tour to help celebrate the upcoming release of Aprilynne Pike's newest YA book.
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Thoughts from Aprilynne:
One of the top, oh . . . probably three questions I get at any signing is, “What was your inspiration for . . .” whatever book I’m promoting. After Stephenie Meyer’s famous dream and J.K. Rowling’s budding world written on a napkin, it seems like everyone’s inspiration story needs to be as exciting as their novel! But I suspect Earthbound’s origin story is a bit more typical. I admit, I like sharing it for that very reason.
I was inspired to write Earthbound because I needed to write something new. It’s really as simple as that. Destined was finished, I was certain that was the end of Laurel’s story, and I had to come up with something new.
Luckily, as an already-published author, I had an editor to lean on. I came up with seven very basic pitches and I sent them to my editor and asked her which one she thought sounded the most interesting. The pitch was so bare-bones I can even share most of it here:
Sixteen year old Tavia never expected to wake up after her plane went down. As one of a handful of survivors, her parents decided a quiet, small town away from the intrusive media would be the best place for her to rehabilitate. And for the most part, they were right. Long, calm days with nothing but her home-study course to distract her allows Tavia to recover physically and begin to put together her mostly intact, but shaky memories. Tavia has no reason to believe that the rest of her life can’t be perfectly normal. Until she starts seeing people. People who aren’t there.
(Obviously, some of the details changed; parents, dead. :D) After we decided on the pitch, I had top come up with a story and mythos to go with it! (You know, the hard part.) I bounced ideas off my husband for days and eventually came up with the basic mythos you’ll find in the story. But even then, the magic system, the rules, the history, all of that continued to evolve as the writing process went along and even into edits. On top of that, I switched editors in the middle of this and she had some ideas that made a huge difference in the story! (For the better!)
So I guess Earthbound is less a sparkly story that burst into existence, and more a tiny snowball that slowly gathered snow and got bigger and bigger and really didn’t stop changing or become complete until I turned in that very last round of edits. Do I love it any less than Wings because it was a story I purposely created? Not a bit. Trust me. Is it any less mine because so many people were involved in its creation? No, no, no! Actually, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written! But it definitely has a less-flashy origin. And I’m okay with that.
ABOUT EARTHBOUND:
#1 New York Times bestselling author Aprilynne Pike has created a heart-stopping romance built on a love triangle like you’ve never seen before and filled with epic stakes and a centuries-long conspiracy. Give it to fans of Beautiful Creatures and Nightshade.
Tavia Michaels is the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed her parents. When she starts to see strange visions of a boy she’s never spoken with in real life, she begins to suspect that there’s much about her past that she isn’t being told.
Tavia immediately searches for answers, desperate to determine why she feels so drawn to a boy she hardly knows. But when Tavia discovers that the aunt and uncle who took her in after her parents' death may have actually been responsible for the plane crash that killed them--and that she may have been the true intended victim--she flees for the safety of Camden, Maine, where the boy she sees in her visions instructs her to go.
Now, Tavia is on the run with no one to trust. No one, that is, except for her best friend and longtime crush, Benson. Tavia feels torn between the boy who mysteriously comes to her at night and the boy who has been by her side every step of the way. But what Tavia doesn't know is that the world is literally falling apart and that to save it she will have to unite with the boy in her visions. Only problem? To do so would mean rejecting Benson's love. And that's the one thing Tavia Michaels swore she'd never do.
Aprilynne Pike has been spinning faerie stories since she was a child with a hyperactive imagination. At the age of twenty she received her BA in Creative Writing from Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. When not writing, Aprilynne can usually be found at the gym; she also enjoys singing, acting, reading, and working with pregnant moms as a childbirth educator and doula. Aprilynne currently lives with her husband and three kids in Utah, and dreams of warmer climates.
Aprilynne Pike's #1 New York Times best-selling debut, WINGS, is the first of four books about a seemingly ordinary girl with a not-so-ordinary destiny. In this tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever...
You can find Aprilynne on her Facebook and her website
Follow along the Earthbound blog tour to see every fortune and Aprilynne’s response!
Monday 7/29: Mundie Moms
Tuesday 7/30: The Mod Podge Bookshelf
Wednesday 7/31: Page Turners Blog
Thursday 8/1: Bibliognome
Friday 8/2: Hobbitsies
Monday 8/5: Confessions of a Book Addict
Tuesday 8/6: IB Book Blogging
Wednesday 8/7: The Book Hookup
Thursday 8/8: Addicted 2 Novels
Friday 8/9: Tales of the Ravenous Reader
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Loved hearing the inspiration for this. I have an ARC of this and am excited to share it with my followers.
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