Just A Reminder . . . The Giveaway Is Still Ongoing!

Sorry to post twice in one day (my National Wormhole Day Blog Hop post is here or just below this one) but I wanted to let you know the giveaway of an online pass to the Teen Author Boot Camp is still up in case anyone is interested (or knows someone who might be interested), though it ends at 12:00 AM on Thursday, ET, i.e. tonight. Be sure to get your entries in!


-----The Golden Eagle

Blog Tour: Teen Author Boot Camp (+ Giveaway Of An Online Conference Pass)

Hello, blogosphere! This is somewhat of a different post from what I normally blog about. While I know there's a good chance you, dear reader, are an adult and not a teen, I was contacted by the Teen Author Boot Camp and asked if I'd be willing to do some promotion for them.

Since I'm a young adult myself and thought TABC sounded like a really cool event, I thought I'd jump onboard and spread the word. The TABC was also kind enough to offer to giveaway a pass to their live online broadcast (or $5 off the normally-$10 All-Pass, which gives you access to more than just the live broadcast) whose keynote speaker is Shannon Hale.

The Rafflecopter giveaway is below, after this guest post by writer Margie Jordan, of Writers Cubed.

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There is a famous line from a movie that says, “I was always a band geek. I just never joined the band.” I could relate. When I was in high school I was a president of the dance team, a singer in the choir, a hang-out-with-my-boyfriend-until-mom-and-dad-forced-me-home kind of person. But in my heart, I was a writer. This is why I tell people all the time, “I was always a writer. I just always hated English.”

Because I was a closet writer, I didn’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of, no one to tell me when I stank, no one to teach me how to craft a really great story. My teachers were the millions of books I read (not in a closet—but hidden away when my friends were around).  And I WISHED I could have had someone to talk to about my hidden obsession.

If this sounds like you…. Then I’m happy to say there is a solution.

The Teen Author Boot Camp, founded by the Utah-based group Writers Cubed and sponsored by Utah Valley University is one of only a few writing conferences nationwide geared solely for teenagers who have a love for the written word.  For the first time ever, Writers Cubed is offering the conference to anyone who wants to attend through Live Stream.

Interested? Here are the deets!

When: Saturday, March 16, 2013
From: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (MST)
Where: Worldwide via the internet
Who: Teens, teachers, librarians, book lovers
Cost: $4.99 for the Live Broadcast; $9.99 for the All Pass

The keynote address by Newbery Honor Winning Author Shannon Hale will be free for anyone to watch. It will be on March, 16th, 2013 at 9 a.m. MST. A subscription to the Live Broadcast costs $4.99 and includes the following:
9 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.—Writers Cubed: Welcome
9:15 a.m. to 9:55 a.m.—Keynote by Newbery Honor winner Shannon Hale (Princess Academy)
10 a.m to 10:45 a.m.—Tyler Whitesides (Janitors)  Class: Imagine and Create.
10:55 a.m. to 11:40 a.m.—Janette Rallison (My Fair Godmother)  Class: Bad dialogue can kill a story.
12:50 a.m. to 1:35 p.m.—NYT bestseller Kiersten White (Paranormalcy)  Class: Plot Like a Villain.
1:45 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.—J. Scott Savage (Farworld)  Class: Finding Your Voice.

2:50 p.m. to 3:25 p.m.—Journey to Publication Panel: Agent Amy Jameson & authors Chad Morris, Tess Hilmo, J. Scott Savage, Cindy Bennett
3:35 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.—NYT bestseller Aprilynne Pike (Wings)   Class: World-building is the invisible foundation to your book.
4:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.—Writers Cubed: Winner of the First Chapter Contest and closing remarks.

If you just can’t get enough of TABC, there is also an All Pass Subscription to the rest of the conference (including more than fifteen awesome presentations, including mine--haha). That only costs $9.99 and, as if it wasn’t a sweet enough deal already, you can watch the whole conference whenever you want for an entire year.

To register to watch Shannon Hale’s Keynote for free, visit www.teenauthorbootcamp.com and click on Livestream. It only takes a minute. While you’re there, check out the other presenters who will be teaching at the conference under the tab “Drill Sergeants.”

Stay tuned for details on how to win a subscription to the TABC Live Broadcast for FREE on this blog

Margie Jordan is a co-founder of Writers Cubed, a group of Utah writing activists who created
the Teen Author Boot Camp in 2010. In her spare time, like when she isn’t writing, she is a Literacy specialist for her local school district. Please visit her website at www.writerscubed.com.

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And here's the giveaway:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

-----The Golden Eagle

Book Review: Wondrous Strange

Title: Wondrous Strange

Author: Lesley Livingston

Publisher: HarperTeen

Genre: Paranormal

Page Count: 327

Rating: 2.2 out of 5

Cover Rating: 3 out of 5. Pretty, in a dark-and-mysterious sort of way, although I think that the girl on the front is a little . . . too much girl and not enough other. (I would have preferred something with more of a background based on the Faerie kingdom i.e. trees, pavilion, Faeries themselves, etc.) 

Back Cover:

Seventeen-year-old actress Kelley Winslow always thought faeries were just something from childhood stories. Then she meets Sonny Flannery. He's a changeling--a mortal taken as an infant and raised among Faerie--and within short order he's turned Kelley's heart inside out and her world upside down.

   For Kelley's beloved Central Park isn't just a park--it's a gateway between her ordinary city and the Faerie's dangerous, bewitching Otherworld. Now Kelley's eyes are opening not just to the Faerie that surround her, but to the heritage that awaits her . . . a destiny both wondrous and strange.

My expectations: So-so. Paranormal's not my top favorite sort of book . . . but I have to say, I wanted to read more about faeries, since they seem to be big in YA literature right now.

I got a so-so book, which really isn't helping my opinion of paranormal.

About the book: First, I'm going to talk about the back cover, because I have several issues with it. (Just skip down to "The rest of the plot . . . " phrase if you want to read about the book, not something I have issues with.)

So, the back cover/inside flap is always what you read first, isn't it? To see what the plot's about, the characters, the setting, etc. Well, this back cover gives practically everything away. The romance has to be mentioned to hook readers of course, but in this one it's " . . . turned her heart inside out and her world upside down . . . " which is basically: she falls in love with him and what else is he supposed to do but fall in love with her? And from that much it seems like the falling-in-love part happens pretty fast, since that particular line is in the first paragraph.

CODE RED. I REPEAT, CODE RED. Bad plan, folks. Make it interesting! I want to see the challenges! The difficulty! It's better than just BAM! They're in true love. Because seriously? In life that doesn't happen.

Another issue with that back flap is the " . . . heritage that awaits her . . . a destiny . . ." part. Now, you see, fairly in the beginning of the book Sonny Flannery (I'll get to the characters in a moment) talks about the stolen daughter of the king--Auberon--who was taken into the mortal world. And then he runs into Kelly who, surprise surprise, astonishes him with Faerie powers.

CODE RED. I REPEAT, CODE RED. Another problem with that darned back cover! I mean, leave the reader some guessing to do! Don't just tell them everything! What's the point in reading a book if you know what's going to happen--and you can anticipate every move?

*sighs* So my conclusion is: I can tell you that Kelley's the Faerie princess and that she and Sonny fall in love with each other without feeling guilty because you'd probably figure that out for yourselves rather quickly.

The rest of the plot is . . . mixed. There's just too much telling and not enough showing here, since the author tells you about events that are occurring but she doesn't describe and show you that they are occurring. I hate it when that happens. I can't feel Sonny Flannery wielding that weapon because it's just "he fought" instead of "he fought, whipping his deadly blade left and right, slicing through the creatures that bombarded him from all directions".

I already told you about the romance part (or more correctly the back cover did) and I already told you about the Faerie princess part (same deal) but there's another, more ACTION-ish part which I liked the idea of. 

Basically, every nine years for nine nights before and up to Samhain a gate will open connecting the Otherworld to ours, and Otherworld creatures have the opportunity to escape--except for the Janus guards. I liked the part where they fight off the creatures and try to outsmart the creatures that are trying to outsmart them. I like action. However, the author did not emphasize the tension, the moves, the fighting techniques, which would have really piqued my interest in it. I was disappointed by that, because I wanted to read more of it.

Speaking of the characters, Sonny is a Janus guard. He's all right as a person, and all right as a love interest, but I didn't really find anything SPECTACULAR about him. I mean, he's smart, he's a good fighter, and he's relatively nice to Kelley, (I say this because of the stalking/following stuff at the beginning but it's not as bad as it sounds) but there's nothing outstanding.

For that matter, there's really not much outstanding about Kelley, either. She's an okay actress in NYC, she's not, you know, brilliant or anything, and the only reason she's all that interesting is because she's the daughter of the king, Auberon. Other than that . . . not much is really all that great about her.

The characters' reactions to events is another thing I have problems with. You see, they're not described enough, and they don't change enough as things head their way. It's more like single words of shock but no facial description, body language, etc. In fact, I was amazed that the author got away with so little emotion in the book, because if you count emotion alone this book is flat. Really flat. I think was one of my major problems with this book: I just wasn't feeling much for anyone or anything. (Except the kelpie in Kelley's bathroom. :P)

Other: Nothing language-wise that I can remember . . . so it's relatively clean, since the kissing's down and the action, as I mentioned before, is not described much at all.

Do I recommend this book? No. Actually, I'd advise you to pick up something a little more dynamic seeing as this book is not very interesting, and I think there's really nothing great about it. Not worth the time, unless you're pressed against something else--like sparkly, stalking vamps.

-----The Golden Eagle

Book Review: He Forgot to Say Goodbye

Title: He Forgot to Say Goodbye

Author: Benjamin Alire Saenz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Page Count: 321

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Cover Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Excellent! I had to think a bit to figure out how the road might relate to the book, but other than that, I love it. It's rather empty, but I think that fits the tone of the book pretty well. I love the white/brown/blue theme too.

Inside flap:

"I mean, it's not as if I want a father. I have a father. It's just that I don't know who he is or where he is. But I have one."

Ramiro Lopez and Jake Upthegrove don't appear to have much in common. Ram lives in the Mexican-American working-class barrio of El Paso called "Dizzy Land". His brother is sinking into a world of drugs, wreaking havoc on their household. Jake is a rich West Side white boy who has developed a problem managing his anger. An only child, he is a misfit in his mother's shallow and materialistic world. But Ram and Jake do have one thing in common: they are lost boys who have never met their fathers. This sad fact has left both of them undeniably scarred and obsessed with the men who abandoned them. As Jake and Ram overcome their suspicions of each other, they begin to move away from their loner existences and realize that they are capable of reaching out beyond their wounds and the neighborhoods that they grew up in. Their friendship becomes a healing in a world of hurt.

My expectations: Average. I fell in love with the cover, which I guess made me expect more for some reason, (does that ever happen to you?) but I still expected an okay book.

It was much, much better than I'd thought it would be.

About the book: Plot-wise, this is a great book. Abandoned by their fathers, both Ramiro and Jake are trying to deal with living without a dad around. Tito, Ramiro's little brother, is doing drugs, and Jake's mom is insincere and doesn't really care for him much. Tito ends up in the hospital after OD-ing, and Jake finds out a secret about his stepdad, David. The ending is wonderful, one of the endings where you just want to sigh and hug the book in your hands.

Character-wise, this was also a great book. But out of the two, I think I sympathized with Ramiro Lopez more than I did with Jake Upthegrove. Ramiro's problems just felt more solid than Jake's did, and personally, I think Jake is a bit of a jerk. I'm not in the whole the-rich-kid-is-always-stuck-up, but in this case, it was a bit true. Even so, I liked reading the parts written from his perspective and learning his opinions.

Other: Language, drugs, and some drinking would be the main "issues" with this book if you avoid books with that kind of thing.

At the end of this book--besides feeling like I wanted to hug it--I felt like ranting. Venting my thoughts on the world. Not because the book was horrible or I thought the ending was bad, or because it generally rubbed me the wrong way, but because it demonstrates just how unfair the world is. And also how people deal with that unfairness.

Do I recommend this book? Overall, this was STILL a great book, and I highly recommend it!

-----The Golden Eagle

Book Review: Amy and Roger's Epic Detour

Title: Amy and Roger's Epic Detour

Author: Morgan Matson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Page Count: 343

Rating: 4.2 out of 5

Cover Rating: 4.7 out of 5. I really can't see what they should fix. I love it! Though--I have to say--you could call it a little spoilery . . .

Inside flap:

Amy Curry is having a terrible year. Her mother has decided to move across the country and needs Amy to get their car from California to Connecticut. There's just one small problem: since her dad died this past string, Amy hasn't been able to get behind the wheel. Enter Roger, the nineteen-year-old son of and old family friend, who turns out to be unexpectedly cute . . . and dealing with some baggage of his own.

   Meeting new people and coming to terms with her father's death were not what Amy had planned on this trip. And traveling the Loneliest Road in America, seeing the Colorado mountains, crossing the Kansas plains, and visiting diners, dingy motels, and Graceland were not definitely not on the itinerary. But as they drive, Amy finds that the people you least expected are the ones you may need the most--and that sometimes you have to get lost in order to find your way home.

My expectations: that the writing quality would be low, that the plot would be dull, and it would be a rather so-so read overall.

SCRATCH ALL THAT. It was an really good book!

About the book:

I liked the setting and plot better than the characters, actually, which is sort of disappointing, but still results in a great read. I love books on road trips. There are also flyers, emails, report cards, photos, receipts, playlists, and other images scattered around in there, which I loved. I adore alternative content! The places they go to are really cool, too, and it was fun to read about the places they go. (See above synopsis from cover.)

As for the characters themselves, I liked Amy well enough. She took a while to face her dad's death, but she did get over it, and I found her strong resolve, normal-ness, and the way she took on the situations appealing.

Roger was just as good. The main point of his going along on the trip cross-country was to meet up with his (ex)-girlfriend who suddenly broke off the relationship--he wants to know why, and they travel from Colorado to Kentucky just to find her. I find his whole thing about not saying "good-bye" interesting.

Other: Bad word or two here and there, Amy's brother starts using drugs after their father's death, and while it's not directly described, there is some stuff that's beyond kissing.

Do I recommend this book? Yes! It was fun to read.

-----The Golden Eagle