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 pick:
TITAN MAGIC blurb: Mute, heartless, and tormented by auditory hallucinations, Madeleine Lavoie never questions why her family has hidden her from the world. But the night her brother casts her out, she learns the mysterious voice she thought existed only in her mind is no delusion, and no matter how hard she tries, she can never disobey it. Now Madeleine must find her own voice in a cacophony of powerful tyrants, monsters, and gods. If she fails, she will forfeit her life and the lives of everyone who loves her. But if she succeeds, she may finally gain the ability to love someone in return.
xTITAN MAGIC: BODY AND SOUL Synopsis: “Don’t fool yourself. Fool everyone else, but never fool yourself.”
When a young golem called Kaspar befriends a beautiful baker and her daughter, he wishes, for the first time in his life, to be more than just a counterfeit, wooden child. But such a simple wish comes at a high price, and Kaspar won’t be the only one to pay. With the few who can stop him distracted by their own dreams, Kaspar is free to set in motion a naive and gruesome plan. He hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed, though. He’s a powerful weapon left alone and ungoverned, and he’s already caught the eye of someone with an even more costly wish.
We asked Jodi why she chooses to write for a YA audience:
I wrote a YA novel somewhat accidentally. My intention was merely to write a fairy-tale-inspired fantasy, and I began with a scene involving a runaway woman who was enslaved by a talking stag. I tend to start with a concept, fill in the blanks, and then tweak it later. So, after composing the scene that would become my lost-in-the-woods, fairy-tale start, I examined Maddy's (though she didn't have a name at that stage) origins more carefully. Running from an unwanted marriage seemed a little over-done to me, but I did want her to have run from family because I liked the contrast of traveling from the familiar to the extraordinary. Wicked mothers are fairy-tale standard, but I wanted to write a kindhearted mother for Maddy. I decided it would have to be a wicked sibling that drove her away, and the story just took off from there.
At this point, I realized my main character had become a teenager. It turned out I was writing a YA book, and that made me supremely happy. I had recently discovered that YA books were crazy-fun to read, that the quality of YA fiction was often comparable to older-adult books (Coined! OA fiction!), yet they were perfectly paced for my snow-pea sized attention span. Since I started the TITAN MAGIC series, I've written two more YA books (one is published, while the other is aging in a fine oak barrel), and I've loved every jot of it.
I'm hearing really good things about this series and I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks for joining us Jodi.
Our second choice for this week is:
Published: January 2014
An easier and more peaceful life seemed to be destined for Ahmed and
Tashera when they left Washington, DC and entered Georgia Atlantic
University. But when Ahmed is accused of a crime that he didn't commit
and begins to be tried in the media, his popularity plummets, his
self-esteem suffers, and his dreams of playing college basketball
disappear.
Meanwhile, there is a serial rapist on campus who has been attacking
freshman girls at record numbers and forcing them to keep silent. As
Tashera learns about the girls, she begins to close in on the rapist.
But is the attacker too crafty to be caught? Will the state prosecutor
ignore key evidence to instead focus on the fame that comes with
convicting a high profile basketball star?
Tashera is beyond stressed as she divides her time between trying to
find enough evidence to clear Ahmed while at the same time stopping the
rapist who roams the campus of Georgia Atlantic. Ahmed and Tashera's
journey into a new life away from home is more challenging than they
ever thought that it would be.
We asked Yasmin why she writes for a YA audience and this is what she had to say:
I write for a young adult audience for three reasons.
1) When I was a teen, I wrote in journals. I kept a daily record of my experiences. When I became an adult and owned a magazine, I traveled to college campuses and talked to young adults about entrepreneurship, life, and the entertainment business. At my speaking engagements, many students would walk up to me afterwards and ask questions about life. Several of their questions mirrored situations that I endured as a teen. My connection with college students gave me the go ahead to write books that shared my personal experiences from that period in my life.
2) I was often reading adult novels as a teen because the market for young adult novels did not exist--or so the book publishers said. So, when I sit down and write a young adult novel, I'm looking to write a book that I believe a young adult would really want to read. My first YA novel, Retaliation deals with a teen girl who gets jumped. My second YA novel, Accused deals with a teen girl who falls victim to the teen date rape drug. Both books deal with current teen issues.
3) When my first YA non-fiction book, The Blueprint for My Girls, was published I began to conduct several girls empowerment workshops. In those workshops, girls would ask me for more books--fiction books. It was as if they wanted my "fictional" accounts in a book since they had read a version of my non-fiction diaries via The Blueprint for My Girls. Their interest in more books from me motivated me to write Retaliation and Accused.
I love getting emails from readers. I can be reached at yshiraz@yasminshiraz.net or on twitter @yasminshiraz. My website is: www.yasminshiraz.net Join me on Facebook, click here.
**My latest book, Accused, explores sexual assault and being falsely accused. It's the sequel to Retaliation.
Read more about it here.
**My latest webseries, Sources, is part of a DC Dept of Mental Health teen suicide prevention initiative.
Watch an episode here.
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