Boo Bash Giveaway & Interview_ Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst

I am very excited to post this interview with Sarah Beth Durst author of  Drink Slay Love. This is book I am especially excited about because I've heard so many great things about it, seriously vampires and unicorns how cool does that sound?

Pearl is a sixteen-year-old vampire... fond of blood, allergic to sunlight, and mostly evil... until the night a sparkly unicorn stabs her through the heart with his horn. Oops.

Her family thinks she was attacked by a vampire hunter (because, obviously, unicorns don't exist), and they're shocked she survived. They're even more shocked when Pearl discovers she can now withstand the sun. But they quickly find a way to make use of her new talent. The Vampire King of New England has chosen Pearl's family to host his feast. If Pearl enrolls in high school, she can make lots of human friends and lure them to the King's feast -- as the entrees.

The only problem? Pearl's starting to feel the twinges of a conscience. How can she serve up her new friends—especially the cute guy who makes her fangs ache—to be slaughtered? Then again, she's definitely dead if she lets down her family. What's a sunlight-loving vamp to do?

Since I love twitter, I think it would be fun to see how you would describe your book Twitter-style. How would you describe it in 140 characters or less?

Pearl is a 16-year-old vampire, fond of blood, allergic to sunlight, and mostly evil... until the night she is stabbed through the heart by a were-unicorn's horn.



What inspired the concept for Drink, Slay, Love?

One night, I was thinking about how I'd love to write a story with a were-unicorn in it, and it suddenly occurred to me: Unicorns are natural vampire hunters. Seriously, look at their horn. Built in stake! Clearly, their cute and cuddly reputation is mere propaganda to disguise their true purpose...



Which character from your book did you find you could relate to the most?


Bethany. She's the human friend with zero superpowers and boundless optimism. That's me. Like Bethany, I'm the glass-half-full girl (even if the glass is half full of blood).



Not to imply that I drink blood. Totally not a vampire. Just want to clarify that.



What was the hardest part of the writing process?


Saying goodbye to the characters. Usually, my writing process involves at least one "oh, no, I'm doomed!!!" moments, but with this novel... It was so much fun to write start to finish that I cried when I was done. Kind of weird, I know.



Can you tell us a little bit about your writing environment and/or and rituals you go through before sitting down to write?



I like to be temperature regulated. (If I'm too hot or cold, I tend to start whining rather than writing.) Also, I'm not fond of bugs. So if you give me my laptop in a normal-temp room that isn't crawling with centipedes, then I have my ideal writing environment.



I don't think I have any rituals... aside from writing every day whether the writing is going well or not. I don't believe in waiting for inspiration. I believe in showing up to write, and if the muse decides to show up too... well, then, she can share my chocolate.



Do you listen to music while you write, if so what’s on your playlist?


With Drink, Slay, Love, I had a definite playlist. It included a fair amount of Tori Amos and a bit of Queen, plus a variety of songs that just seemed kind of vampiric to me. If you're curious, I posted it here on my blog: http://sarahbethdurst.blogspot.com/2011/10/drink-slay-love-playlists.html



What is your favorite Book or Series?
Ooh, so hard to choose! I read mostly fantasy. And I love books about girls who kick butt. All-time favorite... I think Tamora Pierce's Tortall books.



My favorite recent read is Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Also loved Bloodshot by Cherie Priest and Soulless by Gail Carriger.



If there was one thought or feeling you would want readers to take away from reading Drink, Slay, Love, what would it be?


I want you to laugh.


And for the length of time it takes you to read, I want Drink, Slay, Love to take you away from whatever's bothering you or upsetting you in the real world. I think that's the true magic of books -- the power to transport someone out of their life and into another. I hope I've created that kind of magic.



Thanks so much for interviewing me! Thanks Sarah for giving me the opportunity too!

About the author:

Sarah Beth Durst is the author of young adult novels Drink, Slay, Love, Enchanted Ivy, and Ice from Simon & Schuster, as well as middle grade novels Into the Wild and Out of the Wild from Penguin Young Readers. She has twice been a finalist for SFWA's Andre Norton Award, for both Ice and Into the Wild.

Sarah was born in Massachusetts as Sarah Angelini and grew up in Northboro, a small town in central Mass that later became the setting for her debut novel.

At the age of ten, she decided she wanted to be a writer. (Before that, she wanted to be Wonder Woman, except with real flying ability instead of an invisible jet. She also would have accepted a career as a unicorn princess.) And she began writing fantasy stories.

She attended Princeton University, where she spent four years studying English, writing about dragons, and wondering what the campus gargoyles would say if they could talk.

Sarah lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her two children, and her ill-mannered cat. She also has a miniature pet griffin named Alfred. Okay, okay, that’s not quite true. His name is really Montgomery.

You can find her on Twitter/Facebook/Website

Now on to the Giveaway:

Ms. Durst was gracious enough to provide (1) signed copy of Drink Slay Love to one lucky winner. This contest is open to the US only.

Author Spotlight: Interview with Lor Mandela Series Author L. Carroll

Today, I have been lucky enough to interview the L.Carroll the Author of the Lor Madela: Destruction From Twins, and Four Hundred Days. You can check out my review here.

Now on to the interview:

Since I love twitter, I think it would be fun to see how you would describe your book Four Hundred Days Twitter-style. How would you describe it in 140 characters or less?

*Deep Breath* Here goes... A tyrant is destroying Earth, bit by bit. Can the 17 year old heiress to the Lor Mandelan throne stop him without losing everyone she loves?

When did you know you wanted to become a writer or have you always known?

I never reall imagined myself as a writer, but about eight years ago, following a really cool dream, I began to wonder if I could actually write a book. The dream was about something magical happening in the midst of an epic battle, and I thought it would be a great scene for a movie or a chapter for a book. I decided to give it a go, (the book, not the movie), and the rest is--as they say-- history. (By the way, my dream is now Chapter 16, "Journal of Kahlie", in "Destruction from Twins".)

What was the hardest part of writing the book?

The hardest part of both "Destruction from Twins" and "Four Hundred Days" was making sure that the time-line was accurate. In these books, time on Earth passes thirteen times faster than time on Lor Mandela. It was a challenge just making sure that everyone was the right age, and that the events happened in the correct order! I can't tell you how many times I've cursed at myself for doing that!

I love the world building of Lor Mandela, what inspired the concept behind the book and the world that you built?

Well Thank You!

As I mentioned, it was that dream that started it all. As far as the actual world of Lor Mandela, (since all I really saw in the dream was the inside of one part of a castle), it was sort of a collaborative effort between me and my daughter. We both tend to have pretty vivid imaginations, and when you put us together, it gets dangerous! I'd bounce an idea off of her, she'd elaborate, and throw it back to me, I'd elaborate a little more, etc.,etc., etc....More than one of the places on Lor Mandela evolved this way.

I loved all of the characters in your book, which one did you find yourself relating to the most?

Wow! Thanks again! I'm glad you liked them!

I think I relate most to Ultara-- not that I'm a powerful, intimidating sorceress--it's just, when I was writng the scenes in which she was involved, I imagined myself in her place How would I act? What would I say? if this were me, what would I do? I dunno, maybe part of me wants to be that powerful, intimidating sorceress! :)

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing environment and/or and rituals you go through before sitting down to write?

I have this wonderful office in my garage. Our house is a former model home so realtors' offices were in the garage; when they sold the house, they left one of them intact. It's a great place for me to go and perform rituals, which are a little odd, I warn you.

I usually start out by reading the last chapter that I wrote, and then I get up and act out the next one. I know it sounds weird, but it helps me to make sure that my story has at least some grounding in reality. Plus, it helps the words flow more freely, as I've already "seen" how the chapter will play out. then I write. Occassionally, I'll jump up mid-chapter and re-perform scenes. It's nothing to see me dancing by myself, dueling with an invisible foe, or carrying on a conversation with the wall. (I guess that's why my kids call me "The Crazy Lady" when I'm writing!)

Do you listen to music while you write, if so what’s on your playlist?

I prefer total silence when I'm doing actual writing, but when I'm acting out or thinking about a scene, music definitely helps! Normally, I like a lot of different music genres, but I've found that songs with lyrics are distracting when I'm in the writing zone. Visit my blog and you'll see what I tend to listen to while creating my stories. There's a lot of Hans Zimmer, some Henry Gregson-Williams, some James Newton Howard…epic movie scores are THE BEST! They set the perfect mood!

If there was one thought or feeling you would want readers to take away from reading Lor Mandela Destruction of Twins, what would it be?

While there's no real moral or hidden message in the Lor Mandela books, I know that whenever I read this type of book, or watch this type of movie, I always go away feeling empowered somehow. It seems to be a recurring theme in fantasy novels that seemingly ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I hope that readers feel that whey they finish reading.

Also, I hope that both "Destruction from Twins" and "Four Hundred Days" leave them wanting more...after all, there is a third book on the way!


Thank you Ms. Carroll for taking time out of your busy schedule to stop by.


You can find the books at these locations:

Amazon, Barnes and Nobles

Author Spotlight: Flat-Out Love author Jessica Park

Today, I was lucky enough to score an interview with the awesome Jessica Park, Author of Flat-Out Love. If you have visited my blog in the last few days you've noticed that I kind of Love this story. You can check out my review here.


Now on to the interview:

Since I love twitter, I think it would be fun to see how you would describe FLAT-OUT LOVE Twitter-style. How would you describe it in 140 characters or less?

Majorly deep romance, biting humor, witty banter, earth-shattering heartache, and moving, complex, dysfunctional characters. All for $2.99!

What was the hardest part of writing the book?

With any book, it’s the first twenty to thirty pages. It is dreadful for me. Every word hurts to write. I like to write cleanly, with the intention of keeping those pages and not just throwing words out as a placeholder. Which is stupid. I could go back later and just delete early chapters and rewrite them… But I don’t. The early chapters are when I get to know my characters and how they behave, and it’s really slow going for me at that stage. Yes, I have a general idea of who they are when I finish an outline, but the details don’t become clear until I actually start writing.

With FLAT-OUT LOVE in particular, though, the really hard part was balancing what to tell and show with what was best left unsaid. There is a chapter at the end of the book that takes place on Julie’s last day of school. I don’t want to say too much here for those who haven’t read the book yet… but the first half of that chapter is more about what isn’t said between her and other characters, and what the reader doesn’t see. I hate when I’m reading a great story and then every damn stupid thought and detail is spread out and beaten to death. Readers are not dumb. They can fill in the blanks. And missing information is often much more telling and meaningful. What’s fun is when you react to a story with your heart, your emotions… not when you feel something because the author has told you what to feel.

I have a number of those types of scenes in the book, when one thing might be happening action-wise, but another thing entirely is happening to the characters (and the reader) internally.

I loved all of the characters in your book. Which one did you find yourself relating to the most?

It’s really a three-way tie between the leads: Julie, Celeste, and Matt. In many ways, Julie is so much like me. We’re both moody, and silly, and romantic, and driven to connect with and “fix” those around us. We’re better at taking care of others than we are ourselves. But even though I might technically have more in common with her, I know Matt and Celeste almost eerily well. They were so easy for me to write.

Celeste is extremely unusual (I mean, as far as I know, not many 13-year-old girls cart around cardboard cutouts of their older brothers, right? Or speak like an Oxford professor?), but her totally distinct and bizarre personality made her one of my favorite characters. As much as she and I are different, I know her better than Julie, I think. Same for Matt. He’s highly academic, totally geeked out, and socially pretty difficult… and he’s very guarded and evasive, while still being appealingly sweet. So, nothing like me. But again with this character, I know everything about him.

I could tell you exactly what Matt and Celeste would say in any given situation. It’s a strange experience to understand your characters deeply that they almost feel like real people, separate from the fictional world in my head. So although I may not relate to Matt and Celeste in terms of commonality, that distance between us made me need to understand them even better.

I love the Facebook status updates! Can you tell us more about these? And when did you decide that this was something that should be added to the book?

This was one of the first things that I knew I wanted in the book, for a few reasons. It fits in well considering that Julie and Finn’s relationship is an online one, and it’s also a way to add humor while showing different sides of the characters. Sometimes FB status updates say more about a person than what he/she can tell you themselves, and sometimes they’re just for fun. And then sometimes we try to read between the lines and see what we can figure out about someone… wondering if we can read a mood or a feeling, if that person is talking to us specifically... There’s a certain cryptic and quirky quality to witnessing someone’s online personality.

So I thought that it would be fun to start a bunch of chapters with Matt, Finn, and Julie’s status updates. The hitch was that it was much easier in theory than it was in practice. Anyone who follows me on Facebook knows that most of my updates have to do with current celebrity scandals (ie: senators soliciting sexy by tapping their feet in bathrooms, Levi Johnston posing for Playgirl), weird things that my kid says, and any in-the-moment-hideously-un-thought-out thing that pops into my head.

For the book, though, I needed status updates that were not grounded in a certain event or year or person; they would have to stand the test of time and be funny ten years from now. And I suck at that. I knew exactly what type of updates I wanted; I just couldn’t come up with ones that were right, especially for Matt and Finn (because boys are, you know, weird). Julie’s were easier. So I went around Facebook and pilfered a whole bunch of good updates from people I hardly knew. No, I didn’t do anything of the sort. I asked permission.
My friend Dave was nice enough to give me about 90% of the updates for the book. He is both alarmingly smart and acerbically funny, and his status updates will still be brilliant years from now (whereas mine have the shelf life of an already over-ripe banana). So I spent hours scrolling through two years of his updates, gave myself a vicious case of eye strain, and yanked out my favorites. Half of them I had to toss because they were either too political for this book, or readers would be expected to look up half the obscure references. But the other half were perfect, and it killed me that I couldn’t use all of them.  The ones that made the final copy of FLAT-OUT LOVE all still make me laugh, which is a good thing.

Here are a few of ‘em:

In order for this status update to make any sense, I need you assume I'm covered in some sort of spray-based cheese product.
See? I TOLD you that was fun! Now let's go find your eye.
You may call it "plagiarizing from the classics," but I call it "collaborating with the dead."
I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else. It's the way I take them OFF that makes me better than you.

Dave is on Twitter if you want to follow (or try to follow) him @whatdoiknow.  Ask him to tell you how much he loves vampire romance stories. And then order him to write his own book and quit glomming on to my astronomical fame. 

I noticed that you love listening to music while you write; if I picked up your IPod, what music would I find on your playlist?

A nonsensical mix. I’m not someone who listens to only one genre of music, and I will freely admit that I thoroughly enjoy a good pile of cr*p songs. I’m just not all that cool. I like to mix up older songs that I never get sick of with newer stuff, and I usually have two playlists in heavy rotation at one time: a slower, more mellow one, and then a faster list that I listen to when I’m on the stupid, loathsome treadmill.

Here’s some stuff from my current playlists:

“King of Anything” by Sarah Bareilles

“The Edge of Glory” by Lady Gaga

“Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks

“Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel

“Gone” by Matt Nathanson (my pretend boyfriend)

“Everything’ll Be Alright” by Joshua Radin

“You Send Me” by Aretha Franklin

“I Don’t Need A Man” by the Pussycat Dolls

“Nothing Ever Hurt Like You” by James Morrison

“Circus” by Britney Spears (I can’t help it. I love Brit. I loved her better when she was a total nutcase, but not all crazy lasts forever. Unfortunately.)

“If Anybody Had a Heart” by Matchbox Twenty

“All Eyes On Me” by The Goo Goo Dolls

“Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush

“Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

“Fighter” Christina Aguilera (no song in the world makes you refuse to get off the treadmill more than this one)

See? I don’t really make any sense.

Did your music choices evolve throughout the writing process?

Definitely. Music is a huge part of writing for me. (Although that hasn’t always been true. I used to want TOTAL silence.) When I was writing FLAT-OUT LOVE, I spent a lot of time sitting outside on a lounge chair, eyes shut, iPod in hand, listening to music while picturing scenes. I’d flip through song after song until one of them hit the right mood for me. And then it would be on repeat while I imagined who would say and do what.

The right song can totally pull a scene together for me. I ended up with about ten songs or so that I listened to nearly incessantly while writing. All of the “big” scenes were written with music blaring through my earphones. It’s kind of that extra boost, a way to get myself into the right kind of mood to write what needs to happen. It’s the same way that music strong affects a movie scene… it can make or break what’s happening on screen.

Are you currently working on your next book? If so, what is the story about?

I am the slowest writer ever, I think. I’ve been mulling over an idea for a paranormal romance type book for months now, but I can’t get a handle on it. I really want the story to be about the characters and their relationships and not primarily about some “hook” just for the sake of a “hook.” The actual story needs to be the focus. I think a lot of the vampire and other paranormal books that are selling these days are more about the details of fabricated worlds. Those elements are fun, but as a series progresses, the ante gets upped, and some authors keep adding more and more implausible plot lines and fantastical components to feed the monster. And that bores me and belittles the quality of a solid story.

For me, a slower building story with complex characters is what really drives good fiction, and the paranormal elements need to play into that well, not be the driving force behind a story. (But that being said, I’m not saying what my paranormal elements are. Because they’re secret! And good!)

So, I’m working on it. I’d like to turn my idea into a series, possibly three or more shorter novellas. If I can get myself in gear, that is… *cough, cough*

Quick Fun Facts

Favorite Flower? Blue delphiniums. My mom adores true-blue flowers, and so I’ve planted a few in my garden for her.

Favorite Dessert? Ciao Bella Cabernet Blackberry sorbet. It’s insanely good. Luscious… and kind of sexy. If sorbet can be sexy, which I’ve decided it can.

Pets? A three-year-old Elkhound-mix dog named Fritzy, and two obnoxious cats named Gato and Inga.

Favorite City? Dude, what are ya f*ckin’ kiddin’ me? Baaaah-ston.  (Although, if I say “Paris,” do I get to go there?)

Meet The Author:

Jessica Park is the author of the young adult novel Flat-Out Love, RELATIVELY FAMOUS, five Gourmet Girl mysteries (written as Jessica Conant-Park) and the e-shorts FACEBOOKING RICK SPRINGFIELD and WHAT THE KID SAYS (Parts 1 & 2). You can find Jessica on Facebook,Twitter,  Blog, or Goodreads. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, & Smashwords.