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!

Blog: http://www.theindestructiblesbook.com/blog

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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