Thursday, October 1, 2015

YA Scavenger Hunt Fall 2015!!

It's that time of year again!! When we all go crazy for a few days, trying to win piles of awesome books! This year, I'm also doing my own personal giveaway, so make sure to read all the way to the VERY BOTTOM of the post for your chance to win a signed ARC of ENDURE!! (The final book in the DEFY trilogy!) 

(You can win this!! Make sure to go all the way to the bottom!)


Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize--one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. This year I'm on: 





Directions: Below, you'll notice that I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the Blue Team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!). 

Entry Form: Once you've added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday October 4th, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.


Today I am hosting: 

 Matthew Phillion!! Welcome Matthew! I hear that he will only eat donuts if he can have 21 at a time. (Or maybe that's just a rumor...) Here's more about Matthew:




Matthew Phillion, author of the Indestructibles superhero series, is a writer, actor, and film director based in Salem, Massachusetts. An award-winning journalist by trade, he has also appeared in feature films including the sci-fi romance Harvest Moon and the independent horror flick Livestock. His screenwriting and directing debut, the romantic comedy Certainly Never, premiered in 2013 at the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, where it was nominated for five awards including best screenplay and best New England film. An active freelance writer and journalist, Phillion continues to write about both local issues and the medical industry.


Follow Matthew online!




Here's what Book 3 of THE INDESTRUCTIBLES is about: 

Time travel is a long-standing tradition among superheroes, and so when Anachronism Annie, a friend and ally of Doc Silence, asks the Indestructibles to journey with her to save an alternate future where everything has gone terribly wrong, the team agrees. In this other timeline, a few small decisions have led to a much darker and more tragic world, and the adult versions of themselves the Indestructibles meet—Solar, the Dancer, Straylight, Whispering, and Entropy Emily—are nothing like they expected. Are they heroes? Martyrs? Or perhaps even villains? And what happens when the young Indestructibles discover that the alternate future’s version of one of their own team has been turned into the very weapon that will be used to destroy the whole world? Can they team up with these darker versions of themselves to save an entire future? It's said that when you time travel, you can never come back the same. How will journeying through time change the Indestructibles? Will they ever be the same? The Entropy of Everything is the third book in the Indestructibles series. 


For Matthew's bonus content, he's offering a sneak peek of book 4 in his series! Check it out here: 


From the upcoming Book 4 in the Indestructibles  series by Matthew Phillion and PFP Publishing. Books 1, 2 and 3 are available in both print and e-book formats through all major retailers. You can buy them by clicking HERE

Prologue: Big sky


Billy Case landed in a field outside the City, an old playground gone to seed where his parents used to bring him on those rare days they both could get away from work. Rusted swing sets creaked softy in the light breeze, the entire field cast in a dark pink light as the sun set, turning the City’s skyline into shadowy spires.

Billy, the superhero known to the world as Straylight, looked up into the sky, deep blue darkening to indigo and black, stars so faint as to be almost invisible. A city sky, the sort where the ambient light all cities cast off devour the glimmer of stars and turn the night into a neon-bathed day.

“You know, I didn’t really notice stars till that time Jane took us to her parents’ farm,” Billy said, as if to no one. But he wasn’t alone. Billy Case was never alone, not with the symbiotic alien sharing his body acting as his constant companion, his conscience, his Jiminy Cricket.

This is something you Earthlings do far too often, the alien, whom Billy had dubbed Dude, much to the creature’s annoyance, said. I’ve been on your planet a long time, and I’ve never understood how you look up so rarely.

“We get busy,” Billy said. “We get distracted. And then, I guess… then it’s too late. The stars pass us by.”

They had not long ago returned from a trek into an alternate future, Billy and Dude and the rest of the Indestructibles team, and none of them had come back the same. Billy, in particular, felt more pensive, more inclined to melancholy. But then again, he’d suffered a unique trauma there, sharing memories with his future self, witnessing his own death in that timeline. Things just seemed a little less funny now, though he did his best to keep those worries to himself when he was with the others.

And then a few days ago an alien had crash-landed on Earth, an alien sharing Billy’s powers, with a symbiotic alien just like Dude living inside him. The alien had been more than half-dead, desperate to find his counterpart here, to warn him. An invasion was coming. Another species, and not the friendly and charming kind like Dude. Headed for Earth-fall. Dude called them the Nemesis.

Billy spent a lot of time the past few days looking up at the sky.

Now he saw the others approaching, Jane flying through the evening air like a ball of fire, Entropy Emily far less gracefully drifting behind her in one of her “bubbles of float.” They were looking for him, Billy knew. They needed to figure out what to do. How to stop this invasion. If they could stop this invasion. Billy sat down on a rusted swing, hoping it would hold his weight, and let himself rock back and forth, taking unexpected comfort in the soft squeaking of the chains as he moved. Jane landed nearby, then Emily. Together the girls approached him. Jane stopped in front of him and folded her arms across her chest, her hair moving and dancing like open flame. Emily plopped down on the swing next to him and began to swing for real, legs kicking to stay in motion.

“You know I’m going to have to go up there and scout things out,” Billy said to Jane. Her mouth was a tight line of worry across her face.

“I can go with you,” Jane said. “You shouldn’t go into space alone.”

“Can you believe we’re talking about this?” Emily said. “Going into space? I mean, seriously. Eighteen months ago I was getting in trouble for jaywalking and now we’re talking about interstellar travel. Space. The final frontier.”

Emily began whistling the theme song to Doctor Who softly. When Billy gave her a dirty look, she immediately switched gears to the “Binary Sunset” theme song from Star Wars.

“What?” Emily said. “Tell me that’s not apropos.”

Billy smiled at her then turned back to Jane.

“No, I have to go alone,” Billy said. “You’re the big gun. Everyone will need you here if I don’t come back.”

“I think we’re both the big guns on this team, Billy,” Jane said. “Especially after what happened to you in that other timeline.”

She had a point. They had always been the two most powerful members of the Indestructibles, and Jane seemed to get stronger every day as her solar-powered abilities built up over time. But Billy had absorbed some of the strength of his future self while they were in that other timeline, and it seemed to be permanent. He could do things he hadn’t been able to before. It had changed him physically, too; his eyes glowed blue-white all the time now, the way their mentor Doc Silence’s glowed violet. They both had scars from trying to take on too much power now. Billy wondered if he should get some signature sunglasses like Doc wore.

“I’ll be fine on my own, Jane,” Billy said. “I won’t engage them. I’m just going to get some eyeballs on whatever is headed our way and then come right back.”

“Maybe the alien will wake up and tell us that,” Jane said, referring to the Straylight-like creature who had come here to warn them of the pending invasion. The being remained unconscious at the Tower. Dude told Billy the other symbiotic alien would try to heal its host, but for now, both were in a state of stasis, unable to tell them anything else about what was headed their way.

Billy said nothing, listening intently to the creaking of Emily’s swing, rocking his own to create a call and answer between the two. Creak swing, creak swing, creak swing.

“The two of you,” Jane said, smirking. “You can’t even help it when you’re together to do stuff like that.”

“We’re a team, yo,” Emily said.

Billy leaned back and looked into the night sky again. It felt so overwhelming, looking up there. Like it went on forever.

It makes me feel insignificant, Dude, Billy thought.

It makes us all feel insignificant, Billy Case, Dude said. And it should. If outer space doesn’t make you feel insignificant I would be worried about your ego.

You already worry about my ego, Billy thought.

True enough, Dude said.

“It’s amazing how big it is, isn’t it?” Billy said.

“What,” Emily said.

“The sky.”

“That’s kind of what it is. ‘Big’ is its defining characteristic,” Emily said.

“I know what you mean,” Jane said. “On my parents’ farm I used to lay on my back and just look up and be amazed at how it felt so endless. Just stars and blackness.”

“I was born in the City,” Billy said. “I grew up there. The sky was just that sliver of blue you saw between buildings on those rare occasions you looked up. We didn’t have stars. We didn’t have big sky.”

“This is known,” Emily said. “Seriously, the first time I went somewhere without ambient urban light I thought I was struck blind.”

“If you want, I can go to scout and you can stay here,” Jane said. From anyone else it would have felt like a taunt. From Jane is was simply an honest offer to take away some of your own pain and fear.

“No,” Billy said. “This one’s my job.”

“Okay,” Jane said.

Billy and Emily continued their rhythmic swinging as the sun crept closer to the horizon.

“You’re not leaving right now, are you?” Emily said.

“No,” Billy said. “Got a few things I should do first.”

“Like write a will?” Emily said.

“Emily!” Jane said.

Billy laughed.

“Like I have anything to leave behind,” he said.

“You do,” Emily said. “I, William Byron Case, bequeath to Entropy Emily sole custody of our dog Watson in the event I die tragically in a battle in outer space.”

“It’s all about the dog with you, isn’t it, Em,” Billy said.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’d rather you come home,” she said. “But you better make sure the dog stays with me if you don’t.” 


So cool! Thank you for sharing Matthew! 

***Continue the Hunt by going to Michelle Painchaud's site - CLICK HERE!***

And now, here's your chance to read the conclusion to the DEFY series months before everyone else when it releases on December 29th! (Just promise you won't post any spoilers!) 

Fill out the rafflecopter below and good luck! 


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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

ENDURE pre-order giveaway!!

I can hardly believe we're at this point again... but this time, it's for the last book in the DEFY trilogy! That's right, the end is almost here. ENDURE is only 3 months away, and that means it's time to announce my super awesome pre-order giveaway!! I can't wait for you to all find out how Alexa's story concludes--when you'll finally get to discover everything I've been building toward, planning for and planting through DEFY and IGNITE. It's bittersweet to be sure. Every time I listen to the playlist for this book or open up the ARC and flip to a page, it's hard not to get emotional.

But enough of that, let's get on to the exciting part!

I'm SO excited to announce what I've done for my giveaway this time! I know many of you have noticed there isn't a map in any of the DEFY books...well, that's about to change! I've had a map made and turned into a bookplate that you can stick in whichever of the three books you prefer! And guys it. is. GORGEOUS.

So how do you get this map??

ANYONE who pre-orders a hardcover of ENDURE will get one mailed to them, just for ordering the book in advance, along with a signed set of bookmarks for DEFY, IGNITE, and ENDURE!! That's right EVERYONE who pre-orders a hardcover of ENDURE will get a signed bookplate of the map!!! How awesome is that?!?

Plus, anyone who pre-orders an ebook of ENDURE will get a signed set of bookmarks of DEFY, IGNITE, and ENDURE just for ordering in advance! YAY!!

And then, once you've pre-ordered your book in either format, you can come back here and fill out the rafflecopter form to be entered for the GRAND PRIZE:




My LAST DEFY dagger necklace!! That's right - at this time, this is the last one in existence! You can't buy these anywhere. This is the necklace that my family had made for me and surprised me with when DEFY was released. (Yes, I totally ugly cried in the middle of the restaurant when they gave it to me.) They had a few extras made, and this is the last one. One lucky person will win this one-of-a-kind necklace, plus all the swag!

Is there any way to increase my chances of winning???

Well, yes, there is! If you pre-order more than one hardcover, you can get more than one entry! The option to get an entry for a hardcover pre-order is set to allow you to do it once a day. So if you buy three copies, make sure you come back and fill out that option 3 times!

And of course, as always, I'd love it if you supported my local independent bookstore The King's English by pre-ordering through them. You can order online by CLICKING HERE or by calling them: 801-484-9100. By ordering through them you can also get your book signed and/or personalized and then they'll ship it to you! Make sure to specify who you want it signed to (or if you have any specific requests) when you order!

Pre-Order at B&N by clicking HERE

Pre-Order at Amazon by clicking HERE

Pre-Order at Book Depository by clicking HERE


Thank you so much for taking this journey with me and for being willing to pre-order ENDURE! It really helps authors to pre-order their books and it means so much to me! And good luck!


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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

ENDURE cover reveal!

In case you hadn't seen it yet, here is the cover for ENDURE, the final book in the DEFY trilogy!



Isn't it absolutely gorgeous?!?! I am SO in love with it. So symbolic and powerful. An epic cover for an epic conclusion to this series.

Add ENDURE to-read on Goodreads by clicking HERE!
Pre-order ENDURE on Amazon by clicking HERE! Watch for it on B&N soon! Or order a signed copy through The King's English (info below)!!


I'm dying to share this book with you, but alas, we must endure the wait until Jan. 5, 2016 together. (See what I did there? hee hee...I'm so clever. Or punny. Either way.) HOWEVER, for a few lucky readers, you have the chance to win an ARC from YABooksCentral (who hosted my cover reveal). CLICK HERE for the synopsis of the book (be warned, there are major spoilers for anyone who hasn't read DEFY and IGNITE yet!!) and to enter the giveaway on their website. Just PLEASE PLEASE promise me not to post any spoilers (or give the ending away to your friends) if you win. There are some big ones in this book and I truly hope my awesome readers and fans will give everyone the chance to experience the ending to Alexa's story on their own!

I will also be doing giveaways for ARCs on my different social media sites, so make sure you're following me on Instagram (@SaraBlarson), Twitter (@SaraBLarson), Facebook (www.facebook.com/authorsarablarson), and Tumblr (AuthorSaraBLarson.Tumblr.com).

There will also be a pre-order giveaway that I'm still working on the details for, but basically it will be EPIC. Every pre-order will get something VERY cool and the grand prize will be something you will ALL want, trust me!! (And remember, you can always pre-order signed copies through my local independent bookstore The King's English by CLICKING HERE or calling them 801-484-9100.)

I can't quite believe the end is almost here!
So tell me, what do you think of the cover??

Thursday, April 2, 2015

YA Scavenger Hunt Spring 2015!!

QjIt's that time of year again!! When we all go crazy for a few days, trying to win piles of awesome books! This year, I'm also doing my own personal giveaway, so make sure to read all the way to the VERY BOTTOM of the post for your chance to win a signed copy of DEFY & IGNITE!!


Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize--one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. 


There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the GOLD TEAM-but there is also a red team, a blue team, a teal team, an orange team, a red team, and an indie team for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!

If you'd like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.


SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE

Directions: Below, you'll notice that I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the gold team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!). 

Entry Form: Once you've added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday April 5th, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.


SCAVENGER HUNT POST



Today, I am hosting FONDA LEE on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt! I can't tell you her real age, or she might beat the tar out of me, but I think she looks 21, don't you?? She's so beautiful and talented, too! A double whammy! Here's more about Fonda and her book!




Author bio: 

Fonda Lee writes science fiction and fantasy for teens and adults. Zeroboxer (from Flux/Llewellyn) is her debut novel. Fonda is a recovering corporate strategist, an avid martial artist, a fan of smart action movies, and an Eggs Benedict enthusiast. Originally hailing from Canada, she now lives in Portland, Oregon. You can find Fonda at www.fondalee.com and on Twitter @fondajlee.

Social Media Links 

Website: www.fondalee.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FondaJLee
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fonda.lee.94
Tumblr: fondalee.tumblr.com
Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7705004.Fonda_Lee

Book Cover: 




ZEROBOXER SYNOPSIS:

A Sci-Fi Thrill Ride Set in the Action-Packed Sports Arena of the Future
A rising star in the weightless combat sport of zeroboxing, Carr “the Raptor” Luka dreams of winning the championship title. Recognizing his talent, the Zero Gravity Fighting Association assigns Risha, an ambitious and beautiful Martian colonist, to be his brandhelm––a personal marketing strategist. It isn’t long before she’s made Carr into a popular celebrity and stolen his heart along the way. 


As his fame grows, Carr becomes an inspirational hero on Earth, a once-great planet that’s fallen into the shadow of its more prosperous colonies. But when Carr discovers a far-reaching criminal scheme, he becomes the keeper of a devastating secret. Not only will his choices place everything he cares about in jeopardy, but they may also spill the violence from the sports arena into the solar system.

If that’s not enough to get your attention, check out the ZEROBOXER trailer: https://youtu.be/-YJzwwwmZ3M



EXCLUSIVE CONTENT - FIGHT PROMOTION COMPANY LOGOS

Fonda tells us about the logos: 

While writing ZEROBOXER, I had a lot of fun envisioning not just how a zero gravity combat sport would actually work, but the whole culture and industry behind it, one that mirrors what we’re familiar with today. 

Carr “the Raptor” Luka competes in the Zero Gravity Fighting Association, the pre-eminent professional fight promotion company in Greater Earth orbit. Headquartered on Valtego city station and run by the influential Martian, Bax Gant, the ZGFA Cube is where every amateur Terran zeroboxer dreams of competing. 

Even bigger and more established than the ZGFA is the WCC - the Weightless Combat Championship. Based on Surya city station near Mars’ moon of Phobos, the WCC is a massively popular and lucrative organization boasting the best Martian zeroboxers. 

I just had to design ZGFA and WCC logos. Dar Albert at Wicked Smart Designs helped me create these, and I still bounce up and down and grin every time I look at them. The star in the ZGFA logo, and the Cube (the zero-g arena) shape behind the WCC are perfect. 







Look for these to show up in some pretty epic fight posters very soon. If you want to know when and where exactly, check out the full schedule of Zeroboxer launch events happening over the next several weeks. 

And remember to look for the book on April 8!

CONTINUE THE HUNT

To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author! CLICK HERE TO GO TO E.C. MYERS Website!

And now for your chance to win a signed copy of DEFY & IGNITE, just fill out the rafflecopter below! Good luck!! 

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