Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

BOOK BLITZ: {Guest post + $25 Giveaway} Grounded By You by Ivy Sinclair



Title: Grounded By You
Author: Ivy Sinclair
Publication date: November 20th 2013
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult

Synopsis:


Lights, camera, and passions flare as a small town boy gets the break of his career. As the lines of life and art blur together, can he also find a way to win the love of the girl who got away?

Carter Samuel Groveson.

His name is on the lips of every woman in the country who has a pulse. An actor pulled from obscurity to star in the most anticipated movie of the century, he’s an enigma to all. Everyone wants a piece of him.

Except her.

Amelia St. John isn’t about to follow the life plan that her father set out for her. She refuses to be tied down or commit to anyone. A year ago, she ran as far and as fast from Sam Groveson as she could. But when he reappears in her life and asks her to be the friend he needs to keep him tethered to reality in the midst of the chaos, she can’t say no.

Unfortunately for Sam, his big break comes with expectations that threaten his career if he doesn’t toe the line. In this high stakes game of love, everyone is watching.


Purchase Links:

Guest Post

We all have our guilty pleasures. One of mine, that proves useful at the most random times, is my love of entertainment and celebrity news. Some people check their daily horoscopes or fantasy football stats- I check up on what’s going on in Hollywood. One of the most utilized apps on my phone (aside from Facebook, of course) is my EOnline app. Several times a day I troll the latest entertainment headlines and oh and ah over photos from recent celebrity sightings across the globe.

If you’d ask me why I’m so intrigued with the happenings in movie and TV land and the people who inhabit them, I wouldn’t have a good answer. In a way it’s like asking an avid reader why they like to read so much. You just do, and it feels at times like it’s programmed into your DNA. It’s a hobby of sorts for me, but one I take very seriously.

I enjoy my role of being the first one in my social circle to know the latest break-ups and hook-ups in Hollywood, what movies have recently gotten green-lighted, and who has been cast in the next big blockbuster movie. It makes for good happy hour conversation if nothing else. 

It’s easy to point to the reason for celebrity watching as a kind of envious observation from afar. These beautiful people make a living playing out fiction for our entertainment. They can choose to be anyone they want to be, there’s the appearance that they make a lot of money, and since we always see the same faces in front of the camera, we assume their life is glamorous and fascinating in a way that we ordinary humans will never experience.

But once you start peeling back the layers, you realize that choosing to live your life in the spotlight brings just as many negative aspects as it does positive ones. Watching an emotional Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner testify in court in an effort to protect their children from harassment by the paparazzi shines a much different light on the whole topic.

That’s the level that I wanted to explore in one of the major subplots in Grounded By You. The hero of the story, Carter “Sam” Groveson, is plucked from obscurity to star in the film adaptation of a well-known and loved literary novel. His life is changing forever and he has to learn to maneuver living life in front of the cameras. How that impacts his relationship with woman he cares about, and wants to build a future with, is one of the main obstacles that he needs to overcome.

Ironically, a real story came out around the casting issues for the Fifty Shades of Grey film adaptation that showed a parallel to Grounded By You. The original actor cast as Christian Grey decided to drop out partly due to the pressures of being thrust into the limelight. While this isn’t exactly what happens with Sam in the book, it was a relevant example of an actual situation where life happened to be imitating my art. 

While I enjoy the glitz and glamour stories of Hollywood today, it’s the stories that show the human “in real life” side of the business that truly interests me. Probably because it’s nice to know that despite their jobs, at the end of the day, the people involved in creating those fairy tale, fictional worlds are more like us than we give them credit for.


AUTHOR BIO:
Ivy Sinclair cut her romance teeth on classics like Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, An Affair to Remember, and Sabrina. She is a firm believer in true love, a happily ever after ending, and the medicinal use of chocolate to cure any ailment of the heart. Ivy's guilty pleasures include sushi, endless Starbucks lattes, and wine. Readers of Ivy's stories can expect smoldering sweet stories of romance that tug at the heartstrings.



25$ Amazon Gift Card
Open internationally!



Thursday, October 3, 2013

[Blitz Post+ Giveaway]: Leap of Faith



Leap of Faith by Jamie Blair
Published by: Simon & Schuster BfYR
Publication date: September 3rd 2013
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Event Organized by: Xpresso Book Tours

Synopsis:
Can true love be built on lies? A teen on the run seeks relief and redemption in this gripping, romantic read.

Leah Kurtz has finally found a place to call home, a town where she and baby Addy can live in peace, far from the drug-infested place she grew up. Chris is one of the best parts of her new life, the only person who’s ever made her feel safe. And now that she’s found him, there’s no way she can tell the truth:


Her real name is Faith, not Leah. She’s seventeen, not nineteen. And the baby isn’t hers—Faith kidnapped her.


Faith’s history catches up with her when a cop starts asking questions and Chris’s aunt spots her picture in the newspaper. She knows it’s time to run again, but if Faith leaves, she’ll lose Chris. If Chris is in love with a lie, though, did Faith ever really have him in the first place?




Leap Of Faith Dream Cast

Chris: Michael Pitt


Faith/Leah: Ellen Page


Playlist


Guest Post: Jamie Blair
The Teen Pregnancy Book That’s Not
A handful of times over the past couple weeks, I’ve spotted Leap Of Faith being called a teen pregnancy book. The funny part of this to me is that the teen, Faith, in my book is never really pregnant. But, she does pretend that the baby, who is actually her newborn sister, is her own baby and the situation she gets herself into does make her a teen mom.
Faith, having grown up with an addict for a mom, more often than not with no food in the house, knows that her baby sister is in for an even worst childhood than she had. What starts in Faith’s mind as getting back at her mom turns into an enormous sacrifice as she takes the baby and goes on the run.
Taking care of a newborn isn’t glorified in Leap of Faith and that’s not because as the author I wanted to make the book a preachy, issue book. I wrote it for entertainment, not as a warning to readers. Having a newborn is portrayed as touch because it really is. Having a newborn is insanely hard. Anyone taking on the task of raising a baby needs a support system, and this is where Leap Of Faith gets tricky.
Faith not only finds her support system, but she finds the family she’s never had and always wanted. But, in the back of her mind, she knows her time there is limited. She’s told so many lies, it has to come to an end somehow.
When it all does come crashing down, Faith has a second sacrifice to make. She’s grown to love the family—and the boy—who have taken her and her baby in. But, in order to keep them from being implemented in any legal action Faith might face for kidnapping the baby, she knows she has to leave the perfect life she’s found behind.
Leap Of Faith isn’t a teen pregnancy book. It’s a book about sacrifice, love, family and hope.

Justified Kidnapping?

Is kidnapping ever justified?

In Leap Of Faith, the main character, Faith, kidnaps her newborn sister, Addy, in order to give her a better life. Faith’s mother is a drug addict. Faith has grown up in a neglectful and mentally abusive home, often with no food to eat. In her mind, there is no way she can let this baby grow up the same way she has.
I was approached by a woman who had a very similar situation in her family, so the question I never expected to be asked and never even considered when writing Leap Of Faith was asked: Is it ever okay to kidnap a child from an abusive or neglectful parent?
Approaching the topic from a fictional standpoint as I had, I felt that Faith was justified in her actions, but it was illegal, so I can’t in good conscious say it’s a measure that should be taken in a real-life situation. On the other hand, a child should never be left with an abusive or neglectful caregiver. There are steps to take, authorities to involve—it might take a while and be frustrating to wait for a resolution, but kidnapping can’t actually be an option, can it?
Is there ever a time when it’s justified? When a child you love is in danger? What are your thoughts?



AUTHOR BIO:
Jamie Blair spent most of her teen years choreographing moves for her dance team routines, kissing boys on the couch after her mom went to bed, and pondering the mood enhancement qualities of Lemon Heads when consumed with Diet Coke. Writing under Kelli Maine, she’s the USA Today bestselling author of Taken. Leap of Faith is her debut New Adult novel.



*Giveaways*
(open US only):
10 winners:
--5 prize packages of a signed hardback, a t-shirt and a guitar pick, 
--5 e-books with an autographed Leap of Faith notecard, a guitar pick and stickers