Summer Lovin' Blog Tour: Guest Posts + GIVEAWAYS!

Aloha, everyone! :)

Are you ready for summer? Because I sure am! (I've heard that the whole world has been getting wacky weather, and it's not just us here in Canada.) The Summer Lovin' Bog Tour kicked off a few days ago and I'm so ecstatic to be a part of the blogging team. This tour features two super-sweet summer reads: While He Was Away by Karen Schreck and The Summer of No Regrets by Katherine Grace Bond.

While He Was Away focuses on a girl's life when her boyfriend is sent of to fight in the war, and she has to deal with the hardships and uncertainty of being an army girlfriend.

The Summer of No Regrets is about a girl who stumbles upon a boy she thinks is a celebrity in disguise and prepares for one brilliant, beautiful, and memorable summer full of Hollywood gossip and troublesome bad boys.

I have both authors here for guest posts and giveaways, so have fun! :)

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Guest post with Karen Schreck: 

Why YA Rocks My World

YA is hot.  

As in steamy, sultry, blazing, scathing, illuminating, fiery, incendiary, spicy, enlightening, searing, scorching.  A wildfire. A prairie burn.  An inferno of characters, settings, plots.  A refiner’s fire that draws out pure gold.

YA can also be cold.

As in chill, bitter, harsh, blustery, caustic, shivery, biting, hard-edged, cool.  A frigid wind that dips below zero.  A blizzardy drift of ideas and images.  One snowflake never like the next.  And once all hell freezes over, than YA can be the sharp-edged ax that breaks through the ice of your soul.

YA lit—good YA lit—is never, ever lukewarm.

Not in terms of content—the fearless stories told, the layers of meaning revealed.

Not in terms of character—these people live on the pages, and like most adolescents (or the adolescent in all of us, who lives on and on and on) their motivation frequently cuts to the quick:  they are desperately trying to figure out just who in God’s name they are.

And YA lit is never, ever lukewarm or tepid in terms of voice—which is so driven by character, setting, and plot, and which defines each YA novel—that distinct, one-of-a-kind voice that speaks a book into existence, that prods and goads and compels a writer—me—to tell the story.

This is just a little bit of why YA rocks my world—why I love writing and reading books for teens.  Or, supposedly for teens, since most street smart and literary savvy adults worth their salt know that Young Adult Fiction is among the best literature out and about today.

Don't you think that Karen Schreck is a wise, wise, woman? :')

Go Find Karen:

Goodreads | Blog | Sourcebooks

Add While He Was Away to your TBR pile HERE

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Guest post with Katherine Grace Bond: 

Why We Crave Fame

“Celebrity-in-Hiding.” When I first started writing THE SUMMER OF NO REGRETS, I didn’t want to admit how much that idea intrigued me. I’m a lot like my main character, Brigitta—all about finding the meaning of life, not fantasizing over whether the guy next door is a movie star. When I bought a National Enquirer, I explained to the grocery store clerk that it was for research— that I was writing a book (“Yes,” I told her modestly, “I am an author.”) I certainly didn’t normally read that sort of thing. Of course not. Well, okay, maybe the headlines. Occasionally. 

But as I read through stacks of People and Star and Us (which is a lot like eating sugar cubes all day long), and more stacks of celebrity biographies, I started to wonder what the deal is about fame. Why does it fascinate us? Why do we love the idea of either being famous or being connected to somebody famous? 

I think it’s because we’ve got some interesting ideas about “being known.” If I’m “known,” people know who I am, right? Lots of people. Those people will say I’m talented and beautiful and they’ll treat me with special respect. If I’m known, I get to wear amazing clothes and ride in limousines. People will do what I want just because I’m known. If I only eat the green M&M’s, someone will pick those out of the five-pound bag and put them into a crystal dish for me. If I’m known, I am important—more important than that boss who fired me, or the teacher who gave me a C and said “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,”  or the security guard who threw me out of a mall in Seattle for plugging my cellphone into a floor outlet (true story!) 

But is that really what being known is? Getting special treatment and being better than somebody else? Who really knows me when I’m known like that? What I crave, what I really crave, is to have a few people who will look into my eyes and know me—know how I wrinkle my nose when I laugh, and what my favorite show is, and why I’m afraid of guns. It’s what we all want, I think—people who will listen to us when we’re scared, and scream with us on the roller coaster, and trust us with their hurts. We want to know we matter. We want to have a few people we don’t have to hide ourselves from.  

So is Brigitta’s next-door-neighbor a secret superstar? We can talk about that later. I need to go to the grocery store and read some headlines.  

I'm not the kind of girl who strives for fame or anything, but even I have to admit that it would be kind of cool to have people know your name :)

Go Find Katherine:

Goodreads | Blog | Sourcebooks

Add The Summer of No Regrets to your TBR pile HERE

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The Giveaway

(From the wonderful people at Sourcebooks!)
-open to the US and Canada only
-ends May 2, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.
-2 winners

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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And that's all I have left to tease you with for summertime! What do you think? :)

-Mimi