Shout Out to Indies - Ascension of the Whyte by Karen Wrighton AND Eternity Can Wait by Paula Bell

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:

Sara Carson did not believe in heaven, hell, life after death or reincarnation... but what Sara Carson did not know, was that some of us are special. For some of us, life on earth is merely a short stopover on a much, much, longer journey. In fact for some of us, death is just the beginning of our next great adventure.

Sara Carson was one of those special people, and her most incredible journey did not begin, until the day she died.

When Sara left home for her first day at high school that morning, she had no way of knowing that by the end of the day her life would have come to a sudden tragic end and that she was to leave her earthly body behind and ascend to the Afterlands.

She was to be the first Whyte Ascendant for over a thousand years. With horror she soon discovered the significance of that fact when it was made clear to her that the fate of the Afterlands, and its people now rested in her hands. Ascension of the Whyte is a tale of magic, evil, intrigue, injustice, dragons, friendship and courage, where the bodies of young ascendants become the vessels for magical, wise and ancient souls.

We asked Karen why she writes for a YA audience:

When I was young there were children’s books and there were adult’s books. From a very young age I loved reading and I gobbled up Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven like Chinese food, I never seemed to be able to get enough. I read pretty much all of them before I even started high school. Then there was little else to read apart from the traditional oldies like Alice in Wonderland and Black Beauty. Eventually I had no choice but to make the big jump into adult literature and I began reading classics like Little Women,
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as well as popular adult fiction such as John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (I loved Science fiction and fantasy even then). In those days there was little if any literature for the ‘gap’ between children’s and adult fiction and although I was able to make the jump quite easily, many of my contemporaries did not. Finding relatively few books that included teenage protagonists with whom they could identify, many of my friends just stopped reading. Some of them never read for pleasure again.

When my own children, both keen readers, approached that age I worried that the same thing would happen to them, but it didn’t, because there was a book out there that changed all that, it was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Instead of my children being turned off reading, they were turned on big time, and what’s more the books managed to bridge that ‘gap’ so seamlessly that I could even share the enjoyment of the stories with them. I thought that this was WONDERFUL, which is why it was the natural choice for me to write for this audience and join the ever growing number of YA authors who are successfully continuing what J. K. Rowling started and encouraging young people not to fall through that gap into the abyss of ‘Never to pick up a book again land’. However, this is not the only reason that I chose to write for young adults, perhaps the main reason is that, quite simply, I like young people, and I also happen to love to read the books that they love to read; books that produce a tingle down your spine as you read them, books that make you feel like a child at Disney Land, books that make you really BELIEVE in the magic of make believe. I hope that my books do that, and if they do I will be one very happy storyteller.

Karen Wrighton was born in a small town in the English county of Staffordshire and began her love affair with writing and drawing at a very young age. As well as being an Author Karen is also a psychologist, a blogger and a teacher.

Karen's début novel Ascension of the Whyte'is a magical epic fantasy novel for young adults and is the first book of the The Afterland Chronicles series.

Karen's style is strongly influenced by the books she loves to read, such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. This is evidenced by the magical quality that pervades her writing. Karen has two daughters and lives in Norfolk, England with her husband John.


Jilted by her boyfriend and abandoned by her best friend, Jenny’s summer is shaping up to be a complete disaster. Even her college plans have been wrecked by her ex-boyfriend and the blonde cheerleader he dumped her for. Jenny is facing the prospect of not only a miserable summer, but also a long and unexpected gap year alone.
The only thing that gets her off the sofa and out of the house is the thought of visiting her aunt, and meeting up with some old friends out of town.
Jenny’s journey doesn’t run smoothly. With her car abandoned at the roadside in the middle of nowhere, she faces a choice. Does she head back home, or should she take a risk and continue on foot through the notorious woods she’s grown up hearing so many eerie stories about?  
A mysterious stranger steps in to help her. When Jenny finds out who, and what he really is, nothing will ever be the same for her again.

We asked Paula why she like to write YA

Although I am an adult I adore reading YA literature! I like the variety in this genre. It's a great area where there's a lot of leeway to read what you like and write what you like. Reading YA books is a pleasure for me but writing them is a great fun. Writing a YA fiction story feels like creating your own imaginary word. It is exciting and engrossing. Sometimes it`s difficult but definitely not boring.

About Paula:

I was born under the sign of Leo in the year 1983.
I have graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Management.
When I am not writing, I enjoy reading, cooking, and listening to music.

Please feel free to contact me on Twitter @Paula_Bell_69.