Happy First Birthday, Evernight Teen! #Giveaway celebration

EVERNIGHT TEEN turns one this month and I’m helping them celebrate during their 1st Birthday Blog Hop! It’s EVERNIGHT TEEN’s birthday but YOU get the presents. Enter below for a chance to win a $100 iTunes gift card!

EVERNIGHT TEEN books feature fresh teen fiction that’s raw, gritty and real. Whether paranormal, contemporary, sci-fi or suspense, EVERNIGHT TEEN stories are about real issues and pack a strong emotional punch. You’ll find cutting edge fiction that today’s young adults can relate to and will keep you turning the pages long into the night. Upper Young Adult titles, include…

Letting Go by Bridie Hall

Isabelle is left stranded at the airport, and her only chance of getting home is with her boyfriend’s older brother, Harper. When this good girl and bad boy set off towards home, it turns out that maybe she’s not such a good girl after all. And even bad boys have reasons for their bad behavior.

The road trip is full of shocking revelations and unexpected emotions, bringing the two of them closer than Isabelle ever thought possible. Maybe too close.

Letting Go by Bridie Hall is now 25% off at Evernight Teen until January 31st!

Iris's note: I'm about 89% finished reading this book now and it's a definite recommended read! 

Leave a comment about Letting Go below for a chance to win an Evernight Teen eBook of your choice. Then follow the Rafflecopter to enter the grand prize of a $100 iTunes gift certificate.

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Cover Reveal! Night & Day (The 19th Year #3.5) by Emi Gayle

Back ‘o the Book

Something is wrong with Suze. His memory, his magic, even his muscles have all gone mental. If he's not careful, the underworld's version of the loony bin may be his next stop.

Not ready to give up the goat yet—if he had one he didn’t eat that is—Suze sets out to stop the mystical mayhem. Unfortunately, this isn't a fairy tale, and Suze isn't Snow White felled by an apple waiting for a kiss. Nor is he Prince Charming.

Nope, he's just Suze. A destroyer demon stuck without the one person who probably kept him sane for the last eighteen years. Mackenzie Thorne. Or, maybe, just maybe, Mac made him insane, and what was once wrong is now right.

The only thing Suze is sure of—maybe—is that he needs to find the cure. However, with boy wonder memory-less and Mac in California, he’s not even sure where to start.

Of course, once he does figure it out, everything will fall into place like a well designed set of dominoes. Where the path leads, though, is a place Suze never would have expected.

Release date is February 10, 2014 - just in time for Valentine’s Day 

The price will be $.99!

Available in ebook and paperback

Add this novella to your Goodreads shelf HERE

Find Emi Gayle online : Web | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Louder Than Words to be PUBLISHED!!

Finally, finally, I can announce:

Yes...I've found a home for Louder Than Words with Swoon Romance, a digital first imprint / sister company of Month9Books. I am so very excited to be a part of the Swoon Romance family. I have read several of their books because I already knew and loved the authors. I also love Swoon's upbeat covers, so perfect for young adult books.

Estimated publish date is September 2014.

I can't wait to share this book with the world.

I can't wait to make my official debut as Iris St. Clair!

Life is good.

Remember:  Never. Ever. Give. Up.

Ten Things I'm Horrified to Say Date Me

No, not date as in go on a date, but date as in reveal how old I am.

I'm not a teenager. I'm not even a young adult. I'm at least one generation removed from that age group. Factor in my advanced maternal age of 36 and 38 when I had my two sons and that's an even larger gap.

What's tough as an older writer of contemporary young adult fiction is finding ways to make relatable  references to modern life without dating the story on day 1 let alone day 1000. You walk a thin line and it's a bittersweet one as well, knowing your popular culture references are no longer "hip" but are up there with aging Deadheads. And I hope you even know what a Deadhead is...you probably don't because I used the term to refer to those a generation older than me nearly thirty years ago. The wry line in Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" song -- I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac -- that's how it is for me now. A joke nobody gets anymore.

Other examples of references I've been called on or nearly used in error:

1. My kids have no concept of life during the Iron Curtain days, when athletes defected during the Olympics and all we knew of places like the USSR, East Germany, etc. was dystopian and scary androgynous.

2. Manual typewriters are now antiques, even the IBM ball ones. Nobody ever mentions Pica or Elite. We're all over the Times New Roman and Courier. Carbon paper? White Out? What are they?

3. Tonya Harding, Mike Tyson and Bruce Jenner as athletes; O.J. Simpson as an athlete, actor and tried murderer. One beta reader of my very first novel wrote in the margin, "Who is Billy Blanks?"


4. Wall phones and the lack of caller ID. On a university tour with my son, I noticed the distinct lack of any land lines. Makes sense but I gotta say I kind of miss the days when you could dial and hangup on someone just to see if they were home and retain your anonymity. Crank calls were a lot of fun. Kids today don't know what they're missing. Prince Albert in a can anyone?

5. Pong vs. Grand Theft Auto--like comparing Anne of Green Gables to Fifty Shades of Grey.

6. "Playing" outside vs. gaming vs. working out. The first used to encompass the latter two, which today gaming and working out are mutually exclusive unless you **maybe** blow the dust off your Wii Fit.

7. Long skis. When I was learning, the longer your ski, the greater your speed but the greater expertise required to master them. Today those 150 cm length beginner skis work even for the pros...at least the last time I skied. Maybe they've grown longer again. No idea.

8. Skimpy Speedo bathing suits...but only on Olympic caliber swimmers and divers, thank you very much, for the rest of the population, it's good riddance. The bicycle short and long john pants (skintight and made of liquid sharkskin) now prevail.

9. Paper-based banking. I've been paying bills online for years, but it shocked the hell out of me the other day when my ATM no longer took checks via a deposit envelope but by feeding it in like a dollar bill in a vending machine. Actually, the technology is better than that used for vending machines because you can feed a whole stack of checks in. (Yeah, I know...what are "checks"?) I liked it, but the whole thing was still a little disturbing, the whole optical character recognition. Probably should have just scanned it with my cell phone and saved a trip.

10. CDs (albums, 8 tracks, walkmans, boomboxes and cassettes)--music with a tangible element to it. It's all about the MP3 now. Even today's automobiles are more likely to support a USB drive than a CD deck. There are no B-side songs anymore or "deep album cuts". There are no surprise favorites. The album notes and cover scroll across the face of an MP3 player or smart phone now days. There's something wrong about John Cusack holding up a tiny iPhone to play Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes".

What dates you? Share in the comments your examples.

My Love / Hate Affair with Rain

I live in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, it rains here. It rains a lot. While our total rainfall accumulation is not the highest in the nation, it's the constancy that gets to most people. Fall and Winter are gray and cloudy most of the time. Rain, when it falls, comes down like a Chinese water torture--slow and steady and unending.

How could I not cast rain in my stories set in this part of the country?

Answer? Impossible.

Louder Than Words was my second story set in my own backyard. Rain is mentioned at least eighteen times by my own rough Word search count.

Rain represents limitations--either self-imposed or real. It presents the challenge of action over attitude and resignation.

In pondering the instances I found, some of the story's most important turning points occurred during the rainfall--moments of clarity, of hope.

I love that.

As much as we dread our dismal rainy days here, we also know they bring fresh beginnings.

So, on the eve of December as I write this and the skies out my window are a melange of grays and white, the ground still wet from the early morning rain, I too hope I'm at a turning point in this writing business.

We'll see. In the meantime, I'd best get back to my 2013 NaNoWriMo novel set in--where else--the Pacific Northwest.

What Makes a Story "NEW" Adult vs. Adult?

I wish I could say I was a new adult...sometimes. There's a lot to be said for the ease of youth--taut dewy skin, supple joints, stamina and speed--but maturity ain't so bad either. I made some choices in my younger days that might have killed me, but ultimately made me stronger in a different sort of way, like forging steel in fire.

Where am I going with this?

Where is the divider line between those experiences that might be defined as either "coming of age" or post coming of age, experiences that thrust the protagonist up against or over the line into fully adult territory vs. just being an adult adventure? Is there a divider or is the nature of the experience and/or the chronological age of the character what separates the two reader groups? How raging is the inferno of experience that appeals to one age group vs. another?

Honestly... I don't know.

I think perhaps it's a "I know it when I read" type boundary that is fluid from one reader to another. Admittedly, I've played with that boundary, subbing my book Louder Than Words as young adult to some, new adult to others. I also flirted with new adult in my other me's debut novel, The P.U.R.E.; I just didn't realize it at the time because there was no "new adult" when I wrote and marketed it.

The protagonist in that book, Gayle, is fresh out of college and starting her first job in her chosen career field, public accounting. Hmm... seems like that's new adult territory when you factor in all her bumbles and fumbles trying to avoid the tag that is the book's title--P.U.R.E. or Previously Undetected Recruiting Error. Gayle is green, green, green, to the post-college workforce, to corporate politics, to subtle (and not so subtle) misogyny and sexual harassment, to ultimately realizing how powerful passion can be--a recurring theme throughout the story. I think what makes Gayle appealing, and of interest to new adult readers, is her wide-eyed naivete coming into the story that slowly forges through fire into a more mature, and yes, more cynical, outlook.

Now other new adult stories I've read have taken the opposite tack. The protagonists in those stories begin beaten down and cynical, and through their fires, find hope, love, and optimism.

So, perhaps that is the key--the injection of cynicism or optimism to shove that youth into an adult who more fully realizes that life isn't a bowl of cherries, but neither is it a bowl of pits. The youth of the character makes the impact of that injection more noticeable and lasting, like a drop of black paint on a white canvas or white paint on a black canvas. As adults, most of us have acquired a gray cast--hence that other book--because the splatter has been absorbed and blended.

What do YOU think separates "new" adult from adult? Is it an age cutoff thing, like under 25 is new adult, over 25 (or whatever number) is adult? Share in the comments if you would.

P.S. If you're interested in my "new adult" debut, The P.U.R.E., it's 99 cents until the end of October. Click the picture to check it out!

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Perry Road by Emi Gayle Release Day and #giveaway!

Perry Road is Now Available!

Release News! Perry Road, the first in the Revolution Series, by Emi Gayle released September 3, 2013

Perry Road

Revolution Series by Emi Gayle

Release Date: September 3, 2013

Target Reader: New Adult/Young Adult

Keywords: Dystopian Paperback, EPUB, Kindle

Description

In 2132, “We the people …” means nothing, and it hasn’t for a hundred years.

Like all the citizens of the American Union, eighteen-year-old Erianna Keating is not to ask questions. She is not to believe anything except what the A.U. tells her. More importantly, she’s not supposed to know what she doesn’t know, nor that she’s a pawn.

Like everyone else, though, she is, and like everyone else, she is a hundred percent oblivious to what’s going on.

Or is she? Are they?

Erianna thinks going to Perry Road and joining the national registration program is her next step toward adulthood; the 2132 candidates for adult-classification, though, are in for a big surprise. Especially Erianna.

Thanks to Zane Warren, an awkward but hot guy who won’t shut up about a history that doesn’t—or shouldn’t—matter anymore, Erianna will know. Will learn. That includes finding out what actually happens after registration and doing something, anything, about it.

Fixing what went wrong, what caused the U.S.A. to split into two countries, though, is not on Erianna’s bucket list, but as she faces her future, she must decide whether to fall in line with the American Union’s plan for her, or to consider that Zane might not be wrong, and the time for revolution begins now.

Reviews!

What are people already saying about Perry Road?

“This one, by far, is Emi’s best. Of anything she’s written.”
— Julie Reece, author, Crux

“I really hope [this] stirs up controversy and changes some youngsters thinking. God knows we could use that today in this society!”
— Terri Rochenski, author, Eye of the Soul

“… this was a total pleasure to read.”
— Kelly Said, author, Tidal Whispers & Make Believe

“… [this] will inspire an extreme diversity of opinion. It kept me involved and interested throughout, and I love novels that make me question my current understanding/viewpoint on life.”
— Amaleen Ison, author, Remember Me
 

About the Author

I had a really great bio in my head around midnight one night …. right before I fell asleep and it disappeared into the nothingness of unconsciousness. Bummer. So here’s something less well thought out.

I want to be young again, so I’m kinda sorta living it again. At least on paper. You see, I write paranormal romance. Now, that stuff can get really hot, and really gritty and well … mine does. But! My characters are teenagers, 18 and under. Like I was once … and want to be again.

Why would I want to be a teenager again? Geez. Because! If you met the man of your dreams at 14 was engaged to him at 19 and married him at 20, wouldn’t YOU want to do all that over again? Especially if you were still in love with him? I mean, c’mon! It’s love! That’s why I write, too.

You see… just because you pass a certain age doesn’t mean you forget what it was like to be 14, 15, etc. Actually, because I kinda grew up with my husband, we both still feel like the 14 and 17 year old kids we once were. So that’s where I’m coming from. You might think it’s totally lame, but you know what? That’s ok! Maybe you’ll like my other me instead. ;)
 

Excerpt

Which I could be. Don’t want to be. Really, really, really don’t, and staring at Cam in her new clothes without holes, her clean hair cut by a professional and the fact that she’s my friend reminds me why: Flukes are poor. I should know. My mom is one.

The animation keeps going as if it’s really trying for me—not that it can. I drop my P-Comm to my leg just as dark words appear on screen. My heart picks up speed, and a tingly tension takes over.

“Well?” Cam asks.

For some reason, I don’t want her to know. I want to find out by myself if I’m going to get a real life, or if I’m destined to wear hand-me-downs from twenty years ago until I’m ninety. I want to prepare, to plan, to cry if we don’t get to go together, or if I’m not like her.

I’m not, of course—in any way like her. Who am I kidding?

After what seems like hours, but is only seconds, I say, “Nothing.”

“Damn.” She throws her arms up in the air. “Figures. And it’s almost five. So, you know, I gotta go. Mom’s sure I’m going to be chosen to pop out babies, like she is, so she wants to make sure I know how to cook before the fake chefs get ahold of me to ‘teach’ me.” Cam gives me a dramatic eye roll and places a hand to her forehead. “Like, oh, my Oz, Eri, you know? We have people to cook for us for a reason. Duh! If I learn to cook, what job am I going to give someone like your mom, you know? And why would I get picked to be fat and ugly when I look like this?” She bats at her blonde curls.

Wanting to change the subject—to anything but the woes of Cam’s perfect life—I walk to her, give her a hug and a quick pat on the back. “I’ll … call you when I get it, ‘kay?”

“You better. We only have two days to shop for the perfect outfit. Why couldn’t your birthday be October twenty-ninth instead of December?” She snatches up her coat—preparation for the winter blast that will tear into uncovered skin. “And … you’re not a fluke. You will get in the white house, and when January first comes, we’ll be official!” She boogies her way out, hips wiggling. For someone who’s not happy about the prospect of becoming a baby factory, she’s awfully chipper.

I know it’s because she’s waiting to hear my fate. To prove I’m not a fluke. To validate my relevance as her friend—the one girl Cam can give backhanded compliments, and, for that matter, insults all day long, and still walk back in with a smile as if nothing happened.

Cam walks through the hallway and says goodbye to my mom who’s probably still working at her makeshift office in our miniature kitchen—trying, I assume, to avoid the whole days’ events. As much as Cam wants me to not be a fluke, my mom wants me to be one. If I’m like her, nothing will change. Like Cam, I’ll be the same old Erianna, just one day older and as useless as all the other flukes in the world.

The front door opens and closes, and I move to the window. Once Cam disappears from view, and only then, I turn over my P-Comm and touch the one message that sits inside.

The one that says: “Invitation for Erianna Price Keating.”
 

Giveaway!

Running from September 2 – October 10, with a plethora of prizes! Or, if you just can’t wait, below, you can buy it now for just $2.99!

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