Book Blitz + Giveaway: Between the Notes by Sharon Huss Roat

Between the Notes
by Sharon Huss Roat
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release Date: 06/16/15

Synopsis:

When Ivy Emerson’s family loses their house—complete with her beloved piano—the fear of what’s to come seizes her like a bad case of stage fright. Only this isn’t one of her single, terrifying performances. It’s her life.

And it isn’t pretty.

Ivy is forced to move with her family out of their affluent neighborhood to Lakeside, also known as “the wrong side of the tracks.” Hiding the truth from her friends—and the cute new guy in school, who may have secrets of his own—seems like a good idea at first. But when a bad boy next door threatens to ruin everything, Ivy’s carefully crafted lies begin to unravel . . . and there is no way to stop them.

As things get to the breaking point, Ivy turns to her music, some unlikely new friends, and the trusting heart of her disabled little brother. She may be surprised that not everyone is who she thought they were . . . including herself.

Debut author Sharon Huss Roat crafts a charming and timely story of what happens when life as you know it flips completely upside down.

by Sharon Huss Roat

I learned recently that R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps books, starts writing ONLY after he is inspired by a great title. As someone who always struggles to find the perfect title, I’m more than a little jealous. Here’s a look at some of the titles I threw out there in the process of naming BETWEEN THE NOTES. Thankfully, none of them stuck.

1) IVY’S TOWER – This was original title, which I thought was a clever play on the term “Ivory Tower”—a nod to Ivy’s fall from affluence that also referred to the very skinny, tall, apartment house where her family moves. Alas, my publisher thought it sounded too young. I was asked to submit other ideas. Hence:

2) A GIRL, HER BEST FRIEND, TWO BOYS, AND A SONG - A longer version of this title might’ve included “A PIANO, HER DISABLED LITTLE BROTHER, A GIRL WITH A CLARINET, THAT DUSTY UKELELE, HER PARENTS, A BICYCLE…” Yeah. Listing everything and everyone in the book does not a title make.

3) IVY DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE - Nope. She moved. And the story is about what happens in the new place, not in the place she doesn’t live anymore. So, never mind. 

4) HOW TO RUIN PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING - This is the title you come up when you’re pulling out your hair out trying to capture in a few words what the book is about and… you fail.

5) PULLING SECRETS FROM A SHELF - When you’re thinking about the part of the story where someone is leaving secret notes for Ivy on a shelf, and then the song “Pulling Mussels from a Shell” gets in your head, and isn’t this the most brilliant title ever? No? FINE.

6) MUCH ADO ABOUT GATSBY AND PONY BOY - There’s some Shakespeare in the story, and The Great Gatsby makes an appearance, as well as The Outsiders. So, OF COURSE the perfect title would somehow combine all of that. Right? WRONG.

7) DISCOMPOSING IVY - Work with me, here. Ivy composes music to calm herself, but has to leave her piano behind and she’s kind of falling apart. She’s… discomposing? Ew, that sounds like DECOMPOSING, doesn’t it? And this is not a zombie story. Nobody’s earlobes are rotting off.

8) OPUS DISASTEROUS - Music theme? Search musical terms and try to rhyme them with words that vaguely describe what your main character is facing, and… TA DA! *Slinks back into cave where horrible title-writers live.

9) UNTANGLING IVY - One of many titles I came up with that tried to capture Ivy’s struggle as if Ivy, the plant, was actually strangling her. (TWISTING IVY, TURNING IVY, THROWING IVY, anyone?)

10) BAD BOY NEXT DOOR - Refer to rejected title Number 2, except pick just one character. The hottest one, preferably. But, what about that other hot boy? BAD BOY NEXT DOOR AND THAT TOTALLY SWOONY OTHER GUY. Too long? Dang.

In the end, my friend and fellow HarperCollins author Hilary T. Smith (WILD AWAKE, A SENSE OF THE INFINITE) suggested “In Between the Notes.” I added it to the list, my editor shortened it to BETWEEN THE NOTES, and a title was born. (And lived!)

Sharon Huss Roat lives in Delaware with her husband and two kids. When not writing books for young adults, you might find her reading (YA of course), planting vegetables in her backyard garden, or sewing costumes for a school musical. BETWEEN THE NOTES is her first novel.

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Release Day Blitz: Ten Things Sloane Hates About Tru (Creative Hearts #1) by Tera Lynn Childs

Ten Things Sloane Hates About Tru (Creative Hearts #1)
by Tera Lynn Childs
Publisher: Entangled Crush
Release Date: 09/14/15


Synopsis:

When life gives you a blank canvas, make art.

Sloane Whitaker hates everything about moving to Texas. She hates leaving behind her friends and half her family in New York, starting over senior year at Austin’s NextGen Academy, and having to say she lives in Texas. Most of all, she hates that it’s all her fault. If she wants to earn her way back to the Big Apple, she has to prove she can still be the perfect daughter.

Which means no vandalism art, no trouble at school, and absolutely no Tru Dorsey, her serial screw-up neighbor, who loves nothing more than pushing her buttons.

But from the moment he vaults onto the roof outside her bedroom, there is something about him that makes her want to break every rule. Suddenly it’ s not the ten things she hates about Tru that are at the top of her list. It’s the ten reasons she doesn’t want to be without him.

Tera Lynn Childs is the RITA-award-winning author of the mythology-based Oh.My. Gods. and Goddess Boot Camp, the mermaid tales Forgive My Fins, Fins Are Forever and Just For Fins, and a kick-butt trilogy about monster-hunting descendants of Medusa that includes Sweet Venom, Sweet Shadows, and Sweet Legacy. She has published two e-novellas, Goddess In Time and Pretty In Pearls, and self-published her City Chicks sweet chick lit series. Tera lives nowhere in particular and spends her time writing wherever she can find a comfy chair and a steady stream of caffeinated beverages.

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Top Ten Book Openings

Lucifer (Sons of Old Trilogy #1)
by Annabell Cadiz
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: January 31st 2013

Synopsis:

Have you ever wondered what could be hiding in the shadows?

Well, for eighteen-year-old Zahara Faraday, she doesn’t have to wonder. You see she comes from a lineage of Light Witches, those who have chosen to help protect and serve between the supernatural world and the human world. The only problem is Zahara, like her father Solomon, is as human as a human being can be whereas her mother, Mia, and her Aunt Catalina, were born as Light Witches. As a family they hunt down rogue supernaturals—creatures who harm humans or who have committed an act against their kingdom. 

Zahara’s hunting skills are usually kept dormant since her parents would prefer she live life as a normal human girl without knowledge of the supernatural world. She plans on doing just that—except when she finds a couple being attacked by fairies, she has no choice but to step in. Before she can return to pretending to be blissfully ignorant, Zahara encounters a problem she isn’t the least equip to handle: Bryan Hamilton, the good looking new co-worker she has to help train. In a heartbeat, her best friend, Becca King, has set her up on a double date with herself and her new crush, Rekesh Saint-Louis, who happens to be the most powerful leader of the biggest Imago Coven in South Florida –supernatural creatures with the ability to control water . . . and suck out human souls. 

Zahara has no time to focus on how she’s going to explain her double date with her best friend and the enemy they have a tentative truce with to her parents because soon one of the members of Mia and Catalina’s coven is found murdered with a strange tattoo of a snake with wings carved into his arm.

Zahara is then thrown into a whirlwind battle with an angel determined to have revenge against God, an Imago coven she doesn’t think they should trust, and slew of dream-eating fairies and powerful Nephilims, hybrid children of angels and humans, more than happy to rip her to shreds.

Normal just got a deadlier definition.

by Annabell Cadiz

An opening sentence or paragraph to book is where the beginning of where a reader and story connect. It’s crucial to start off a book with just the right tone, the right mood, the right atmosphere to get a reader to continue. A first sentence, a first paragraph holds a lot of weight. A reader can often tell if a book is worth continuing based on how it opens. 

Usually, when I pick up a book, I’ll read the first line or sometimes the first paragraph then the last sentence and that’s how I decide whether or not I’m going to buy the book (or borrow it from a library). There’s a lot of power in those beginning words.

Here are some of my favorite openings to some really great books:

10. From Of Poseidon by Anna Banks—“I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn’t budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he’s waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he’s waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he’s got all day.”

9. From Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins—“Looking back, none of this would have happened if I’d brought lip gloss the night of the Homecoming Dance.”

8. From Perchance to Dream by Lisa Mantchev—“It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ Mustardseed said, flying in lazy loops like an intoxicated bumblebee, “‘that a fairy in possession of a good appetite must be in want of pie.”

7. From The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima—“The scent of wood smoke and roses always took him back there, to the boy he was and would never be again.”

6. From I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter—“I suppose a lot of teenage girls feel invisible sometimes, like they just disappear. Well, that’s me—Cammie the Chameleon. But I’m luckier than most because, at my school, that’s considered cool. I go to a school for spies.”

5. From It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini—“It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That’s above and beyond everything else, and it’s not a mental complaint—it’s a physical thing, like it’s physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don’t come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people’s words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.” 

4. From Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl—“There were only two kinds of people in our town. “The stupid and the stuck,” my father had affectionately classified our neighbors. “The ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else finds a way out.”

3. From How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True by Sarah Strohmeyer—“There was no getting around the fact that Tinker Bell was a little bitch.” 

2. From Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes—“She’d never killed before tonight.”

1. From The Dark Half by Stephen King—“Cut him,’ Machine said. “‘Cut him while I stand and watch. I want to see the blood flow. Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Born and raised in the sweltering suburbs of South Florida, Annabell Cadiz grew up fine-tuned to the cuisine of various Spanish cultures, learned to master the art of Puerto Rican cooking thanks to her parents, and learned to converse crazy thanks to her band of siblings. She is now working toward attaining a B.A. in Psychology at Trinity International University to better understand how to converse with the weirdoes and crazies of the world. (After all, she is one of them.) A self-proclaimed nerd and a book-a-holic (her room holds dozens of shelves with much evidence to prove that her claims are indeed true), she created TeamNerd Reviews along with her best friend, Bridget Strahin, to showcase their EXTREME love for all things book related.

She published her debut novel, Lucifer (Sons of Old Trilogy #1), in January 2013. The second novel, Michael (Sons of Old Trilogy #2) will be released on May 28, 2014. And the final installment in the Sons of Old Trilogy, Nephilim, will be out in Summer 2015.