Crawdad Blog Tour

Happy New Year &Welcome to the Crawdad Book Blog Tour!

For the whole month of January, my new contemporary young adult novel Crawdad, will be featured on the blogs of some of my besties - authors and book bloggers who support the readers and writers of  diverseYA - and I couldn't be more pleased. I hope you can visit them all and enter the giveaway.  Here's the schedule:

Magic of the Muses - Eileen Schuh January 1
I Read too much! January 5
Rich in Variety January 8
Beth Fehlbaum Books January 15
CJ Burright January 22
Twinjas Book Reviews January 29

~About the Book~

Seventeen-year-old Jamil Ramos grew up on Alabama’s Gulf Coast believing his mom, Loretta, was his only living relative. She put a trumpet in his hands as a toddler and sparked his love of jazz. But when Loretta drops a bomb on Jamil from her deathbed- she’s not his mama and his daddy is still alive, living in Charleston, S.C. – his world is turned upside down.

Now, with the only mama he’s ever known gone and the Loyola University trumpet audition less than a week away, Jamil has trouble feeling his music. When his band teacher tells him to get it together, Jamil decides to hitchhike to South Carolina over to find his father and get his questions answered. All he has is a name –Leon Ramos.

Jamil relies on the kindness of the strangers he meets-a gay teen kicked out of his home, a runaway prostitute, and a street musician-as he makes his way across Florida and Georgia trying to avoid the cops along the way. But when Jamil is robbed of his most prized possession, his trumpet, his plans go anywhere but where he’d hoped. That trumpet was supposed to be his ticket for a scholarship, the only way to college his mama could give him. Lost and alone without it, Jamil wonders if finding his father is worth risking his future.

You can find Crawdad in print and e-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads!

~About the Author~

Lisa T. Cresswell has been writing middle grade and young adult books for what seems like a mighty long time. She can never seem to make up her mind if she likes reality or fantasy, so she writes both. She also likes lemon jasmine green tea, dark chocolate almonds, and lots and lots of coffee. And of course, BOOKS. ALL THE BOOKS!! You can see all of her work at www.lisatcresswell.com 

~Enter the Giveaway~

Enter to win one of three copies of Crawdad to be given away in January!

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Life is too short.

Life is precious and life is too short.

Too short to let fear hold you back.

Too short to spend every day indoors.

Too short to hold grudges or be angry for long.

Too short for hate and prejudice.

Too short to hang onto your money.

Too short not to give.

Too short not to do the things you love, to find your passion.

Too short not to smell the flowers.

Too short not to let your loved ones know you care.

Your life is a precious gift you've been given. 

Live it.

My next book cover reveal ~ Crawdad

I know I've been a little quiet this year, but I do have a surprise for you. I'm publishing a new novella titled Crawdad. It's a southern story, much like my first novel Hush Puppy, about a young man who goes on a cross country trek to find his dad after the woman he thought was his mom passes away.

The book is inspired a lot by what I've seen in the news over the last few years. Kids today are living in increasingly violent worlds, but many kids are not violent. They're just trying to do the best they can, you know? Full disclosure, I am a white woman of European descent, but I've always believed we are more alike than we are different and our stories are essentially the same. We are all born the same way, we grow up with hopes and dreams for our futures, and we all fall in love. We all experience pain and rejection at some point in our lives. If we're lucky, we experience great joy. As my character Recks says in my novel Vessel, "The outside doesn't matter. It's what's on the inside that counts." I truly believe that.

Crawdad is now available in print and e-book!

Book bloggers friends, if you'd like to host Crawdad during the book tour in December, sign up with 

Rich in Variety Book Tours as a host!

A New Start ~ Vessel returns

I have news! My young adult, sci-fi, dystopian Vessel is returning in print. 

Call it Vessel 2.0 :)

You might recall, it was previously published as an e-book. I think that puts a book at a bit of a disadvantage, at least for young adult books. As technologically advanced as we think we are, print books are still in demand and many young readers only read print. Lesson learned!

If you haven't heard about the book before, it's the story of a slave girl and a thief who find themselves in a fight against the Reticents, a secret society that has claimed all knowledge for themselves after a solar storm wipes out all digital data on Earth.

So, now that the cover for the new edition is ready, I'd like to share it with you....

You can add Vessel to your Goodreads list now. 

The new print edition is available on Amazon. 

It's happening soon! Sign up for the cover reveal :)

I'm pretty excited about this new book of mine peeps! If you blog at all, sign up with Rich in Variety to reveal the cover on Nov. 30 or join the blog tour in December.

Crawdad is a multi-cultural, contemporary story set in the South. If  you loved Hush Puppy, I think you'll love this one too.

Here's a look at some the inspiration for Crawdad.

Sign up soon!

Just a few thoughts about fear~

There's been a lot of internet noise for the last few months, maybe even years, about "The Other". You know, the people who are different, the people who come from far away, the people we know nothing about, but who seem really scary and violent. The Other.

For many Americans, The Other seems to be the other 7 billion people on the planet. Some of those 7 billion are very poor. Some of them are dying right now in terrible wars they didn't start, probably didn't even want. Some of them have awful diseases we don't see in the United States because of access to health care and vaccines. Many of them are children who have done nothing except to be unfortunate enough to have been born in places that are not as safe (relatively speaking) as the United States.

What bothers me about this noise regarding The Other is the sense that people here seem to think "I've got mine. I don't need to help anyone else." This includes The Other in their own country as anyone who is poor, looks different, and perhaps is struggling in some way - the vet with PTSD, the person living out of their car, the beggar in the Walmart parking lot.

For those that fear The Other (make no mistake it's fear), there's no urgency to help their struggling fellow Americans, and certainly no desire to help refugees from other places. I've got mine. Go away. I hear the internet noise everyday and it makes my head hurt.

Fortunately, there are also many people in this world who are kind and generous and have less fear for whatever reason. They weren't raised to believe they needed a gun to protect themselves and their stuff. No one ever taught them "it's me against them". That gives me hope.

No matter how self reliant you are, there will come a day when you need help. It happens to everyone. Not just the poor or the less fortunate. Everyone.

As my cancer-surviving friend says "We're all terminal." One day, we will all get sick or hurt, maybe when we least expect it, and we'll find ourselves at the mercy of others for help. Maybe then we'll understand that struggling doesn't make you less of a person and it doesn't make you less worthy of care. It makes you human.

I feel sorry for those who feel such fear. For all our sakes, I hope they can find peace.

Cover Reveal: Secrets of a Reluctant Princess by Casey Griffin with Giveaway

Welcome to the Cover Reveal for

Secrets of a Reluctant Princess by Casey Griffin

presented by Entangled Teen!

Be on the lookout for this upcoming title, and be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of the post!

 

Life-Action Role Playing gamers, this one's for you!

 

Author, Casey Griffin's thoughts on the cover:

 

Talk about punch! The colors immediately grab my eye and the font is so fun and unruly. I feel like the combination of those two things makes the cover of Secrets of a Reluctant Princess striking. With the simple yet powerful design, I think it will scream out from the bookshelf "pick me!" Or maybe that's just because I love pink. And glitter? What's not to love? I'm so happy with the results.

 

 

At Beverly Hills High, you have to be ruthless to survive…

Adrianna Bottom always wanted to be liked. But this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. Now, she’s in the spotlight…and out of her geeky comfort zone. She’ll do whatever it takes to turn the rumor mill in her favor—even if it means keeping secrets. So far, it’s working. Wear the right clothes. Say the right things. Be seen with the right people. Kevin, the adorable sketch artist who shares her love of all things nerd, isn’t exactly the right people. But that doesn’t stop Adrianna from crushing on him. The only way she can spend time with him is in disguise, as Princess Andy, the masked girl he’s been LARPing with. If he found out who she really was, though, he’d hate her. The rules have been set. The teams have their players. Game on.

Secrets of a Reluctant Princess by Casey Griffin Publication Date: March 7, 2016 Publisher: Entangled Teen Genre: Contemporary, YA

Amazon.com | B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Amazon.UK | Amazon.ca | Indies

 

 

Casey Griffin can often be found at comic conventions on her days off from her day job, driving 400 ton dump trucks in Northern Alberta, Canada. As a jack of all trades with a resume boasting registered nurse, English teacher, and photographer, books are her true passion. Casey is a 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel finalist, and is currently busy writing every moment she can.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

 

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