Forgive My Fins, by Tera Lynn Childs is scheduled to be released on June 1, 2010. I’m not sure if this will be a series, but it sounds really good. I love the premise and I’m really interested in the mythology. The cover is simply stunning.
Lily Sanderson has a secret, and it’s not that she has a huge crush on gorgeous swimming god Brody Bennett, who makes her heart beat flipper-fast. Unrequited love is hard enough when you’re a normal teenage girl, but when you’re half human, half mermaid like Lily, there’s no such thing as a simple crush.
Lily’s mermaid identity is a secret that can’t get out, since she’s not just any mermaid – she’s a Thalassinian princess. When Lily found out three years ago that her mother was actually a human, she finally realized why she didn’t feel quite at home in Thalassinia, and she’s been living on land and going to Seaview high school ever since, hoping to find where she truly belongs. Sure, land has its problems – like her obnoxious, biker boy neighbor Quince Fletcher – but it has that one major perk – Brody. The problem is, mermaids aren’t really the casual dating type – when they “bond,” it’s for life.
When Lily’s attempt to win Brody’s love leads to a tsunami-sized case of mistaken identity, she is in for a tidal wave of relationship drama, and she finds out, quick as a tailfin flick, that happily-ever-after never sails quite as smoothly as you planned.
A Prolific Blogger is one who is intellectually productive… keeping up an active blog that is filled with enjoyable content.
1. Every winner of the Prolific Blogger Award has to pass on this award to at least seven other deserving prolific bloggers. Spread some love!
2. Each Prolific Blogger must link to the blog from which he/she has received the award.
3. Every Prolific Blogger must link back to this post, which explains the origins and motivation for the award.
4. Every Prolific Blogger must visit this post and add his/her name in the Mr. Linky, so that we all can get to know the other winners. (Click here for the Mr. Linky page.)
I received this really cool award from JAD over at Cafe Pearl.
Seven things about myself:
1. I’m an only child.
2. In an effort to be more adventurous, I’ve agreed to go white water rafting and sky diving with friends. I’m already regretting both, but I want to face my two biggest fears. Deep water and heights.
3. My favorite color used to be blue, but now it’s purple. Not sure why I made the change.
4. My favorite movie genre is horror. I will watch any and all things related to horror. If you haven’t seen The Crazies yet – RUN out to see it. It’s a very good movie.
5. I used to write Buffyverse fan fiction. Pretty lame, huh? A few of my friends have pulled me into Supernatural fan fiction. Wincest has become a guilty pleasure of mine.
6. One of my favorite graphic novel series is The Walking Dead. Crossed is also really good.
7. I love to wear and buy lots of jewelry from Judith Jack.
Want to know more tidbits about me? You can click here and here to find out more.
I’m passing this award on to 15 blogs that I really enjoy:
I’m so excited to welcome Kimberly Derting here to DarkFaerieTales.com to talk about her debut young adult novel, The Body Finder, which is available NOW in stores. You don’t want to miss out on this one. It’s such an enjoyable read. You can read my review of the book here.
DFT: Could you start things off by telling us a little about the book?
Violet Ambrose can find dead bodies. Or at least, those that have been murdered. And as if that weren’t enough to deal with during her junior year, she also has a sudden, inexplicable, and consuming crush on her best friend since childhood, Jay Heaton.
Now a serial killer has begun terrorizing Violet’s small town…and she realizes that she might be the only person who can stop him.
DFT: What motivated you to write The Body Finder?
The idea for The Body Finder actually came from my husband. He’s always throwing around random ideas, and one day he just looked at me while we were driving and said: “What if there was this person who could find dead bodies.” Of course, in his head it was a middle grade boy, but my brain went into overdrive, and by the time we got home I was practically racing through the front door to start making notes. That was how my main character Violet (and her uber-creepy ability) was born.
DFT: If you could describe your main characters with only 3 words, what would they be?
Violet: Brave, tough, compassionate.
Jay: Sweet, funny, protective.
DFT: Tell us something about your research process and the choices you make when creating the story.
When I first “created” Violet’s ability, I wrote out the ground rules for them. There were things that Violet knew about her ability, like that she could only sense those who had been murdered, each “echo” would be unique and it would “imprint” itself on the one responsible for the death, and that once a body was laid to rest properly its echo would fade (although the imprint on the killer would not).
As the book evolved, the rules changed a little, but not much. I added rules that Violet doesn’t entirely understand yet. I keep those “in the vault,” to reveal in snippets as she discovers more about what she can do with her gift.
The most in-depth research, however, had to do with the discovery of the dead bodies, and finding out which emergency responders would be first on the scene, who would have jurisdiction, and how they would respond. I interviewed police and fire officials to get a good sense of the way local authorities would interact. It was actually very interesting.
DFT: What influences and inspirations (both literary and non-literary) did you draw from while writing The Body Finder?
I’m not sure I drew any specific inspiration for The Body Finder, but there are so many writers who have influenced the way I write in general. Personally, I bow down to Stephen King. Mostly because when I was a teen, I was a voracious reader, but we didn’t have the YA variety of today, especially for horror and suspense, so I was forced into the adult market. Authors like King and John Saul and Dean Koontz became staples for me. I devoured them. Of course, that was in the ‘80s, so there was the obligatory Jackie Collins as well. I was a pretty well-rounded reader.
DFT: Who is your favorite character in this book, and why?
Of course, I love my main characters, Violet and Jay, but one of my favorite secondary characters is Violet’s friend, Chelsea. Chelsea is the kind of girl who says whatever’s on her mind, and it’s usually something crude or shocking. We don’t see as much of her in the first book, but in the sequel, Desires of the Dead, we get to see a more sensitive side of her. Well, as sensitive as Chelsea is capable of being.
DFT: Do you have a long-term plan or goal for this story universe? What happens next?
At this point, book two (Desires of the Dead) is scheduled for release in 2011. I’m just finishing edits on it now. Ultimately, I would like to do more books with Violet and Jay, and I have an idea of what will happen next, but nothing I can talk about just yet.
DFT: What other projects are you working on that you would like to tell us about?
I’m really superstitious about talking about my new projects, but I will say that, yes, I am working on a new YA book…one that I am very, very excited about!
DFT: If you could choose only one, which would you choose: for The Body Finder to be award-winning, or for The Body Finder to be bestselling? Why?
I hate to be a sell-out, but I have to go with bestselling. I would really rather know that a lot of people have read it (and hopefully enjoyed it!) than to know that it’s won a lot of awards, but hasn’t reached a lot of readers. Of course, I wouldn’t mind a little of both!
DFT: What was the path to publication like for The Body Finder? Was it difficult to find an agent and a publisher?
I actually my agent at the BEA Writer’s Conference during their three-minute pitch sessions. It was nerve-wracking, but fortunately my agent saw past the moment when I mixed up the words “urban” and “rural” and she decided to sign me anyway. After that, everything went very quickly. She pitched the manuscript to editors and sent it out right away, and it wasn’t long before we had our first offer. It was like a whirlwind!
DFT: Why do you think there is the misconception that young adult books are not as deep or as complex as books for adults? What is your response to this misconception?
I say the people making those claims haven’t read the right YA books (or probably haven’t read any at all!). YA is a strong genre, chock-full of amazing writers. I love being part of this community. And teens are too smart and too savvy to allow us to get away with “writing down” to them. Are all YA books deep and complex? Of course not. But the same thing can be said of the adult market.
DFT: What is your favorite fairy tale? Why?
I’ve always loved Little Red Riding Hood…even when I was a little girl. Probably because, even then, I liked dark tales of intrigue and murder.
DFT: What books/genres do you read when you have the chance? Any must read authors or series?
I read pretty much everything. This past year, as part of the Debs and the Tenners, I’ve been so fortunate to read an abundance of fabulous books, but I have to say that some of my all-time faves are still books like To Kill A Mockingbird (which everyone says, but it’s true!), The Shining (which is the complete opposite of TKAM, but I’m a rabid Stephen King fan), The Kite Runner (because I cried), Night by Elie Weisel (because I was appalled) and The Golden Compass (because Philip Pulman created an amazing world). See? I read it all!
DFT: What is your definition of a “bad writing day”? How do you deal with bad writing days?
I don’t know that I necessarily have “bad writing days,” but I definitely have “no writing days.” There’s really no rhyme or reason to how much I write on any given day. On a good day, it could be 3,000 words, on a bad day zilch. Fortunately, the good days far outweigh the bad!
DFT: Do you have a particular writing process or any writing rituals?
I’m not much of an outliner, so mostly I just open whatever document I’m working on and go for it. Despite the fact that I don’t have a hard outline, I do have a very distinct idea of where I’m headed with the story. I may have even written it down (in not-too-many words) I just don’t always know exactly how I’m going to get there. That’s what revisions are for, to clean up my first draft mess.
During edits, I don’t write at all because I become consumed with editing. (Oh, and did I mention that I LOVE edits???)
DFT: What creature are you afraid of most?
Please don’t laugh…I’m actually a little afraid of vampires. For real. When I was younger, my grandfather scared me by telling me they were real (and he believed it!) and that I was never to invite them into my home. You would think that after all these years, and a sparkly vampire later, I would have gotten over that fear, but there’s still a small part of me that kind of believes. How sad is that?
DFT: If you could be any paranormal creature. Which one would you be and why?
Maybe I’d be a vampire, just so I could prove to myself that they’re really not so scary. Then again, I might be terrified…
DFT: Thanks Kimberly for taking the time to stop by.
Here is another update for the Books to Watch list. Department 19 and The Sundowners series both sound really good. I’m definitely intrigued. I haven’t read anything by Mercedes Lackey, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about her books. You can view my previous Books to Watch posts here.
1. John Richard Stephens’s BOOK OF THE LIVING DEAD.
2. Vivi Anna’s next two paranormal romances which will begin a new series featuring demon hunters.
3. Romantic suspense author Dee Davis’s three new books in the A-Tac series.
4. Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill’s THE SUNDOWNERS BOOK I: WEST OF THE MOON, a steampunk Western, in which three teens in 1867 Texas pool their skills to defeat a zombie army, for publication in Fall 2011.
5. OR Melling’s THE CELTIC PRINCESS, a mythological adventure series in which the 16-year-old daughter of the High King strives to become a warrior to avenge her father’s murder– with the help of a young and charismatic slave, and together they make magic happen, in a two-book deal.
6. William Hill’s DEPARTMENT 19 series, about a secret government agency of vampire hunters and a boy whose lineage makes him the target of the world’s oldest and most evil vampire, at auction, in a three-book deal, for publication beginning in Spring 2011.
Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her “power” to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers.
Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he’s claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.
Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay’s intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she’s falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer . . . and becoming his prey herself.
Quick & Dirty: An exciting and heart-stopping tale that will leave you begging for more.
Opening Sentence: Violet Ambrose wandered away from the safety of her father as she listened to the harmony of sounds weaving delicately around her.
When Violet Ambrose was eight years old, she stumbled across the body of a teenage girl. Violet has the ability to sense death echoes of both animals and people as well as the ability to sense “imprints” on those who have caused death. She’s compelled to seek out the echo’s of the dead and make sure that they are properly put to rest. Only Violet’s family and her best friend, Jay, know about her ability. With the overwhelming love and support of Jay and her family, Violet is able to cope with her paranormal ability. When people she knows start turning up dead, Violet is determined to help catch the killer.
The Body Finder is a well-written novel with a unique premise. Ms. Derting has crafted a strong debut that deals with realistic teen issues head on. I appreciate the fact that the parents in this novel weren’t killed off or tragically “damaged” in some way as to impair their ability to parent. I really enjoyed the dynamics of the loving and supportive Ambrose family. I like Violet because she’s such an authentic character. Even though she struggles with the average teenage insecurities, she’s strong, compassionate, and unassuming. I’m also impressed with the way she deals with her ability.
What can I say about Jay? I simply loved his character. Jay is loyal and very protective towards Violet so at first blush – readers might dub him as the one dimensional/clichéd “perfect” best friend turned boyfriend, but you soon realize that he’s so much more. Violet and Jay share an intense love story. When Jay seemingly turns into a young man over the summer break, Violet struggles to deal with her new and not so innocent feelings towards him. Eventually, Jay makes the first move and the sparks that ignite between them burn up the pages. I like the fact that Jay was a responsible and mature teenage boy able to show Violet in many ways his love for her, and that he wasn’t solely driven by his sexual desires for her. The awkwardness and sexual tension between them is really cute and realistic.
The Body Finder will have your heart racing double-time and your pulse-pounding dangerously out of control. The story is well crafted and the tension pulses and rises as the story unfolds. While I did like the ending, I felt that it wrapped up rather quickly. It would have also been nice to see more from the POV of the killer. Those parts of the novel were really creepy and I loved every minute of it.
Overall, The Body Finder is a MUST read. Ms. Derting crafted a suspenseful page-turner that won’t disappoint. The characters are well developed and believable, making it easy to become invested in the outcome. Rich with clever dialogue and filled with gripping suspense, The Body Finder is an intense thrill-ride. I’m looking forward to visiting this chilling and fascinating world again in the sequel, Desires of the Dead.
Notable Scene:
Violet stumbled backward, nearly tripping over her own feet in an effort to escape him. She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling her own terrified yelp as she caught herself before she fell and then froze, praying that he hadn’t noticed the sound of her clumsy feet crushing the twigs beneath her. Suddenly everything she did seemed too loud to her…each carefully plotted step she took echoed loudly off the trees, each labored breath she took was like an explosion. She tiptoed away, but even that seemed too obvious, and she told herself that she needed to act normal…to behave as though nothing had happened and to sneak away unnoticed. He never even looked up from his position.
FTC Advisory: Harper Teen provided me with an ARC of The Body Finder. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. In addition, I don’t receive affiliate fees for anything purchased via links from my site.
