Shout out to Indies

We here at The Paperback Princesses often receive emails from Indie authors requesting reviews and are blessed with free book copies. Often we are unable to get to so many titles before our mass market published books take over our TBR shelves. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of great reads though! We want to give back to those Indie authors and are declaring EVERY SECOND SUNDAY our SHOUT OUT TO INDIES MEME. For those of fellow bloggers, please feel free to add our meme to your regular schedule. We only ask that you quote and link back to us as a courtesy. For all of you Indie authors, we invite you to contact us at the contact link to your top left. We will select 1 - 3 titles (each time we post) that sound interesting. Lastly, for you readers, this is a bit of a test so please do comment and let us know what you think. We will also be offering up giveaway copies whenever we can! So without further ado, here are this week's picks -

 

 

 

To Dance in Liradon, Coming September 2012 from Soul Mate Pubishing

 

When Brigid suddenly finds herself torn between two men and two worlds, her struggle leads her into the glittering, ruthless world of Faerie where she must rescue her true love from a terrible sacrifice or lose him forever. 

A little bit about Adrienne Clarke 

Adrienne has previously published short stories in The Storyteller, Beginnings Magazine, New Plains Review, and in the e-zines A Fly in Amber, Grim Graffiti, Les Bonnes Fees, The Altruist,  The Devilfish Review, and Rose Red Review. Her short story, Falling was awarded second place in the 2008 Alice Munro short fiction contest. To Dance in Liradon is her first published novel.

An avid reader of fairy tales and other magical stories, a thread of the mysterious or unexpected runs through all of her work. When she’s not writing Adrienne can be found searching for faeries along with her daughters Callista and Juliet.

Bridgeworld and Encounter at Atlantis by Travis McBee

 William Haynes was the guy that every boy wanted to be. He was an honor roll student and captain of his middle school football team. He was dating the most popular girl in the school and had dozens of friends. Yes, life was perfect for Will…that is until a strange man shows up and forces his parents to reveal a secret they have kept hidden since he was born. He is told that he has been given a scholarship to a prestigious private school that his parents attended, a private school that happens to be in space. Will must choose between a life many would die for and a life none could imagine. A life where he is no longer perfect, where he must make new friends, and where he must survive a school rivalry like no other. Published July 2011 and September 2012

Guest post from Travis McBee

Someone once asked me what I was working on. I responded by telling them about a young-adult novel I had just signed a contract for, and how I was mid-way through a middle-grade book. They looked surprised. “Why are you returning to young-adult books?” they asked me. By that time, I had published two more novels along with a few short stories, and they were far from young-adult. It took me a while to figure out what they were talking about. I mean, why wouldn’t I write young adult?  Did they think that just because I could write more adult books, that I was wasting my time by not doing so? It almost seems expected for writers to seek to break from the YA mold, to progress up into the big boys. I wondered if I was wasting my time, if I should focus on the big books, but then I thought about it some more and realized that the reason I chose that genre for my introductory novel, and why I keep coming back to is very simple.

The reason is the most important aspect of reading, if you ask me,. It’s the simple fact that young-adult books are a ton of fun to both read and write. I’m twenty-two years old, have a vast collection of books at my disposal including numerous classics, and read widely. But time and time again, I find myself drawn back to books that I’m supposed to have “out grown.” In the past month alone, I’ve read: The Lost Years of Merlin,  Artemis Fowl, and The Seventh Tower. All of them are intended for middle school to early highschool age students. But I love them. I throw them in between readings of Dickens, Stoker, King, and Grisham. You see, young adult books are written for the purest of reasons. They aren’t there to preach at you, to convince you to see their way, or to enlighten you to some great disaster in the works. They aren’t meant to shake your faith in humanity or to make you too scared to sleep without a nightlight—well sometimes they do; I’m looking at you R.L Stine! They’re only there to entertain you, so when life gets a little too hectic, too stressful, or just plain too serious, I reach for a young-adult book to take a load off. Because when you read young-adult, pretensions disappear. You’re reading for fun, plain and simple. So if you’re ready to just relax, enjoy a casual afternoon with a good story, pick up your son or daughter or nephew or maybe even the kid next door’s book—he keeps leaving stuff on your lawn, so it’s only fair.