When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie Mclemore {blog tour excerpt}

Today I have the blog tour stop for Anna-Marie McLemore's newest YA novel,

When the Moon Was Ours

Check out below for more info and an excerpt of this gorgeous sounding story, which was just recently longlisted for the
2016 National Book Awards for Young People's Literature!
Congrats to Anna-Marie! 

When the Moon Was Ours follows two characters through a story that has multicultural elements and magical realism, but also has central LGBT themes—a transgender boy, the best friend he’s falling in love with, and both of them deciding how they want to define themselves.

To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. 

But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.

Thomas Dunne Books  •  Hardcover, 288 pages   •  October 4, 2016


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Excerpt

     As far as he knew, she had come from the water. But even about that, he couldn’t be sure.

      It didn’t matter how many nights they’d met on the untilled land between their houses; the last farm didn’t rotate its crops, and stripped the soil until nothing but wild grasses would grow. It didn’t matter how many stories he and Miel had told each other when they could not sleep, him passing on his mother’s fables of moon bears that aided lost travelers, Miel making up tales about his moon lamps falling in love with stars. Sam didn’t know any more than anyone else about where she’d come from before he found her in the brush field. She seemed to have been made of water one minute and the next, became a girl. 

    Someday, he and Miel would be nothing but a fairy tale. When they were gone from this town, no one would remember the exact brown of Miel’s eyes, or the way she spiced recado rojo with cloves, or even that Sam and his mother were Pakistani. At best, they would remember a dark-eyed girl, and a boy whose family had come from somewhere else. They would remember only that Miel and Sam had been called Honey and Moon, a girl and a boy woven into the folklore of this place.

     This is the story that mothers would tell their children:

     There was once a very old water tower. Rust had turned its metal such a deep orange that the whole tank looked like a pumpkin, an enormous copy of the fruit that grew in the fields where it cast its shadow. No one tended this water tower anymore, not since a few strikes from a summer of lightning storms left it leaning to one side as though it were tired and slouching. Years ago, they had fi lled it from the river, but now rust and minerals choked the pipes. When they opened the valve at the base of the tower, nothing more than a few drops trickled out. The bolts and sheeting looked weak enough that one autumn windstorm might crumble the whole thing.

      So the town decided that they would build a new water tower, and that the old one would come down. But the only way to drain it would be to tip it over like a cup. They would have to be ready for the whole tower to crash to the ground, all that rusted metal, those thousands of gallons of dirty, rushing water spilling out over the land.

     For the fall, they chose the side of the tower where a field of brush was so dry, a single spark would catch and light it all. All that water, they thought, might bring a little green. From that fi eld, they dug up wild flowers, chicory and Indian paintbrush and larkspur, replanting them alongside the road, so they would not be drowned or smashed. They feared that if they were not kind to the beautiful things that grew wild, their own farms would wither and die.

      Children ran through the brush fields, chasing away squirrels and young deer so that when the water tower came down, they would not be crushed. Among these children was a boy called Moon because he was always painting lunar seas and shadows onto glass and paper and anything he could make glow. Moon knew to keep his steps and his voice gentle, so he would not startle the rabbits, but would stir them to bound back toward their burrows.

     When the animals and the wild flowers were gone from the brush fi eld, the men of the town took their axes and hammers and mallets to the base of the water tower, until it fell like a tree. It arced toward the ground, its fall slow, as though it were leaning forward to touch its own shadow. When it hit, the rusted top broke off, and all that water rushed out.

     For a minute the water, brown as a forgotten cup of tea, hid the brush that looked like pale wheat stubble. But when it slid and spread out over the field, flattening the brittle stalks, soaking into the dry ground, every one watching made out the shape of a small body.

     A girl huddled in the wet brush, her hair stuck to her face, her eyes wide and round as amber marbles. She had on a thin nightgown, which must have once been white, now stained cream by the water. But she covered herself with her arms, cowering like she was naked and looking at every one like they were all baring their teeth.

     At first a few of the mothers shrieked, wondering whose child had been left in the water tower’s path. But then they realized that they did not know this girl. She was not their daughter, or the daughter of any of the mothers in town.

     No one would come near her. The ring of those who had come to see the tower taken down widened a little more the longer they watched her. Each minute they put a little more space between her and them, more afraid of this small girl than of so much falling water and rusted metal. And she stared at them, seeming to meet all their eyes at once, her look both vicious and frightened.

     But the boy called Moon came forward and knelt in front of her. He took off his jacket and put it on her. Talked to her in a voice soft enough that no one else could hear it.

     Every one drew back, expecting her to bite him or to slash her fingernails across his face. But she looked at him, and listened to him, his words stripping the feral look out of her eyes.

      After that day, anyone who had not been at the water tower thought she was the same as any other child, little different from the boy she was always with. But if they looked closely, they could see the hem of her skirt, always a little damp, never quite drying no matter how much the sun warmed it.

     This would be the story, a neat distillation of what had happened. It would weed out all the things that did not fi t. It would not mention how Miel, soaking wet and smelling of rust, screamed into her hands with every one watching. Because every one was watching, and she wanted to soak into the ground like the spilled water and vanish. How Sam crouched in front of her saying, “Okay, okay,” keeping his words slow and level so she would know what he meant. You can stop screaming; I hear you, I understand. And because she believed him, that he heard her, and understood, she did stop.

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Lovely stuff, right? I can't wait to read this one. 

Let me know what you think and why you can't wait to read it! 

•ABOUT THE AUTHOR•

Anna-Marie McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, raised in the same town as the world's largest wisteria vine, and taught by her family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds. Her debut novel THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS was a Junior Library Guild Selection, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults book, and a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award. Her second novel, WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, will be released on October 4, 2016, and WILD BEAUTY is forthcoming in 2017.     

WEBSITE  •  TWITTER  •  FACEBOOK

Purchase the book:  Indiebound  •  Bookdepository  •  Amazon

The Star Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi {review}

The Star-Touched Queen
by  Roshani Chokshi
♦publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
♦release date: April 26th, 2016
♦hardcover, 342 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone (with forthcoming companion)
♦source: from publisher for honest review

Fate and fortune. Power and passion. What does it take to be the queen of a kingdom when you’re only seventeen?

Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of death and destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father’s kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran’s queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar’s wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire…

But Akaran has its own secrets—thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most…including herself.

Review: The Star-Touched Queen is a gorgeous story of love and power, deception and forgiveness. It’s artfully written in beautiful prose full of lush description and metaphor.  It felt like a blend of Alice in Wonderland (with its bizarre creatures and dream-like atmosphere) and the Persephone myth, both deliciously steeped in the colors and flavors and vibrancy of India.

Maya is a fantastic character, both headstrong and heart-led. She is in a constant struggle to overcome being outcast because of her dreadful horoscope, something those around her put a lot of stock in.  Her destiny is inescapably linked with death, so of course, no one wants to be too near her, except her little half- sister, Gauri. This one relationship shapes Maya’s determination throughout the story, and I loved that. 

I found the love story to be a heady mix of sultry romance and danger. From the get-go, you can feel something dark about Amar but he’s so kind and adoring, anyone can easily see how he would be irresistible to Maya, especially after years of everyone rejecting her.  But that same thing also gives room for doubt to easily grow, especially when someone from Maya's past steps in.   

There was only one small turn in the story where I found my attention waning a bit, a part where Maya’s fortune changes and the plot tangents off so she can do a little soul searching,  but it was still interesting---new characters introduced, new revelations discovered. And in the end, I found my way back to being engaged in her story.  The Star-Touched Queen is a beautiful, creative, and enchanting fantasy. Can't wait for more stories in this world. 

•ABOUT THE AUTHOR•

Roshani Chokshi comes from a small town in Georgia where she collected a Southern accent, but does not use it unless under duress. She grew up in a blue house with a perpetually napping bear-dog. At Emory University, she dabbled with journalism, attended some classes in pajamas, forgot to buy winter boots and majored in 14th century British literature. She spent a year after graduation working and traveling and writing. After that, she started law school at the University of Georgia where she's learning a new kind of storytelling. The Star-Touched Queen is her first novel.

WEBSITE   •   TWITTER  •   BLOG
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Purchase the book:  Indiebound  •  BookDepository  •  Amazon

The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson {blog tour & excerpt}

Today the blog tour for the awesome debut The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You is rolling though!! Are you all as excited for this one as I am?  It's been called hilarious & heartfelt & geeky & I see lots of Doctor Who references---so this is definitely one I am dying to read!  Today I'm giving you a peek inside with an excerpt of chapter one! 

♦publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

♦release date: May 17th, 2016

♦hardcover, 352 pages

♦stand alone, contemporary

Trixie Watson has two very important goals for senior year: to finally save enough to buy the set of Doctor Who figurines at the local comic books store, and to place third in her class and knock Ben West--and his horrendous new mustache that he spent all summer growing--down to number four.

Trixie will do anything to get her name ranked over Ben's, including give up sleep and comic books--well, maybe not comic books--but definitely sleep. After all, the war of Watson v. West is as vicious as the Doctor v. Daleks and Browncoats v. Alliance combined, and it goes all the way back to the infamous monkey bars incident in the first grade. Over a decade later, it's time to declare a champion once and for all.

The war is Trixie's for the winning, until her best friend starts dating Ben's best friend and the two are unceremoniously dumped together and told to play nice. Finding common ground is odious and tooth-pullingly-painful, but Trixie and Ben's cautious truce slowly transforms into a fandom-based tentative friendship. When Trixie's best friend gets expelled for cheating and Trixie cries foul play, however, they have to choose who to believe and which side they're on--and they might not pick the same side.

Take a peek at Chapter One!!

Chapter One

            Ben West spent summer vacation growing a handlebar mustache.

            Seriously.

            Hovering over his upper lip—possibly glued there—was a bushy monstrosity that shouted, “Look out, senior class, I’m gonna tie some chicks to the train tracks and then go on safari with my good friend Teddy Roosevelt. Bully!”

            I blindly swatted at Harper with my comic book, trying to alert her to the fact that there was a mustachioed moron trying to blend in with the other people entering campus.

            “I know I should have made flash cards for the poems that Cline assigned,” she said, elbowing me back hard, both acknowledging that she wasn’t blind and that she hated when I interrupted her monologues about the summer reading list. “But I found Mrs. Bergman’s sociolinguistics syllabus on the U of O website and I’m sure she’ll use the same one here.”

            The mustache twitched an attempt at freedom, edging away from West's ferrety nose as he tried to shove past a group of nervous looking freshmen. It might have been looking at me and Harper, but its owner was doing everything possible to ignore us, the planter box we were sitting on, and anything else that might have been east of the wrought iron gate.

            “So,” Harper continued, louder than necessary considering we were sitting two inches apart. “I thought I’d get a head start. But now I’m afraid that we were supposed to memorize the poems for Cline. He never responded to my emails.”

            Pushing my comic aside, I braced my hands against the brick ledge. The mustache was daring me to say something. Harper could hear it too, as evidenced by her staring up at the sun and muttering, “Or you could, you know, not do this.”

 “Hey, West,” I called, ignoring the clucks of protest coming from my left. “I’m pretty sure your milk mustache curdled. Do you need a napkin?”

Ben West lurched to a stop, one foot inside of the gate. Even on the first day of school, he hadn’t managed to find a clean uniform. His polo was a series of baggy wrinkles, half tucked into a pair of dingy khakis. He turned his head. If the mustache had been able to give me the finger, it would have. Instead, it stared back at me with its curlicue fists raised on either side of West’s thin mouth.

“Hey, Harper,” he said. He cut his eyes at me and grumbled, “Trixie.”

            I leaned back, offering the slowest of slow claps. “Great job, West. You have correctly named us. I, however, may need to change your mantle. Do you prefer Yosemite Sam or Doc Holliday? I definitely think it should be cowboy related.” 

            “Isn’t it cruel to make the freshmen walk past you?” he asked me, pushing the ratty brown hair out of his eyes. “Or is it some kind of ritual hazing?” 

            “Gotta scare them straight.” I gestured to my blonde associate. “Besides, I’ve got Harper to soften the blow. It’s like good cop, bad cop.”

            “It is nothing like good cop, bad cop. We’re waiting for Meg,” Harper said, flushing under the smattering of freckles across her cheeks as she turned back to the parking lot, undoubtedly trying to escape to the special place in her head where pop quizzes—and student council vice presidents—lived. She removed her headband,  pushing it back in place until she once again looked like Sleeping Beauty in pink glasses and khakis. Whereas I continued to look like I’d slept on my ponytail.

Which I had because it is cruel to start school on a Wednesday.      

            “Is it heavy?” I asked Ben, waving at his mustache. “Like weight training for your face? Or are you just trying to compensate for your narrow shoulders?”

            He gave a half-hearted leer at my polo. “I could ask the same thing of your bra.”

            My arms flew automatically to cover my chest, but I seemed to be able to only conjure the consonants of the curses I wanted to hurl at him. In his usual show of bad form, West took this as some sort of victory. 

            “As you were,” he said, jumping back into the line of uniforms on their way to the main building. He passed too close to Kenneth Pollack, who shoved him hard into the main gate, growling, “Watch it, nerd.”

            “School for geniuses, Kenneth,” Harper called. “We’re all nerds.”

            Kenneth flipped her off absentmindedly as West brushed himself off and darted past Mike Shepherd into the main building.  

            “Brute,” Harper said under her breath.

            I scuffed the planter box with the heels of my mandatory Mary Janes. “I’m off my game. My brain is still on summer vacation. I totally left myself open to that cheap trick.” 

            “I was referring to Kenneth, not Ben,” she frowned. “But, yes, you should have known better. Ben’s been using that bra line since fourth grade.”

As a rule, I refused to admit when Harper was right before eight in the morning. It would just lead to a full day of her gloating. I hopped off of the planter and scooped up my messenger bag, shoving my comic inside.

“Come on. I’m over waiting for Meg. She’s undoubtedly choosing hair care over punctuality. Again.”

Harper slid bonelessly to her feet, sighing with enough force to slump her shoulders as she followed me through the front gate and up the stairs. The sunlight refracted against her pale hair every time her neck swiveled to look behind us. Without my massive aviator sunglasses, I was sure I would have been blinded by the glare.

“What’s with you?” I asked, kicking a stray pebble out of the way.

“What? Nothing.” Her head snapped back to attention, knocking her glasses askew. She quickly straightened them with two trembling hands. “Nothing. I was just thinking that maybe senior year might be a good time for you to end your war with Ben. You’d have more time to study and read comics and…”

            Unlike the tardy Meg, Harper was tall enough that I could look at her without craning my neck downward. It made it easier to level her with a droll stare. Sometimes, it’s better to save one’s wit and just let the stupidity of a thought do the talking.

She rolled her eyes and clucked again, breezing past me to open the door.  

            “Or not,” she said, swinging the door open and letting me slip past her. “Year ten of Watson v. West starts now. But if one of you brings up the day he pushed you off the monkey bars, I am taking custody of Meg and we are going to sit with the yearbook staff during lunch.”

            “I accept those terms,” I grinned. “Now help me think of historical figures with mustaches. Hitler and Stalin are entirely too obvious. I need to brainstorm before we get homework.” 

•ABOUT THE AUTHOR•

credit: Sarah Lambert

Lily Anderson is an elementary school librarian and Melvil Dewey fangirl with an ever-growing collection of musical theater tattoos and Harry Potter ephemera. She lives in Northern California. THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN ME IS YOU 

is her debut novel.

WEBSITE   •   TWITTER  •   TUMBLR
Add  to Goodreads

Purchase the book:  Indiebound  •  BookDepository  •  Amazon

All The Rage by Courtney Summers Blog Tour Giveaway

Today the blog tour for All the Rage rolls through!  I'm thrilled to feature this book and offer up a chance to win a copy!

The sheriff’s son, Kellan Turner, is not the golden boy everyone thinks he is, and Romy Grey knows that for a fact. Because no one wants to believe a girl from the wrong side of town, the truth about him has cost her everything—friends, family, and her community. Branded a liar and bullied relentlessly by a group of kids she used to hang out with, Romy’s only refuge is the diner where she works outside of town. No one knows her name or her past there; she can finally be anonymous. But when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing after a party, and news of him assaulting another girl in a town close by gets out, Romy must decide whether she wants to fight or carry the burden of knowing more girls could get hurt if she doesn’t speak up. Nobody believed her the first time—and they certainly won’t now — but the cost of her silence might be more than she can bear.　

With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women after an act of sexual violence, forcing us to ask ourselves: In a culture that refuses to protect its young girls, how can they survive?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Courtney Summers lives and writes in Canada, where she divides most of her time between a camera, a piano and a word processing program. She is also the author of What Goes Around, This is Not a Test, Fall for Anything, Some Girls Are, Cracked Up to Be, and Please Remain Calm.  

WEBSITE  •  TWITTER  •  GOODREADS

WIN A COPY of ALL THE RAGE!

•Must be 13 or older

•Open to US/CAN addresses only

•Ends May 10th, 2015

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Guest Post with Karen Akins: Favorite Time Travel Inspirations!

Today I'm super pleased to have Karen Akins, author of Loop and the upcoming sequel, Twist as my guest!! She's stopping by to let us in on her favorite time travel inspirations!

 ABOUT THE BOOK:

The unbelievably thrilling sequel to the time-travel YA novel Loop.

Bree Bennis finally has it all—a non-comatose mother, an uber-hot (albeit anachronistic) boyfriend named Finn, and a new-found mission to protect the timeline from those who would skew it for their own gain. But when she leans over one day to smooch said boyfriend, her lips meet those of her arch-nemesis Wyck instead. The timeline has been altered, and Bree is caught in the crosshairs. But when she goes back to repair the damage, she is stopped by none other than her Future Self, who delivers an urgent message: Someone is kidnapping Shifters from the distant past. It’s up to Bree to stop them. But first, she has to figure out who... and why.

To follow the trail of chronocrumbs, Bree reluctantly accepts her new undercover gig as Wyck’s girlfriend. Everything goes spiffy until Finn shows up in the 23rd century on the eager arm of a gorgeous fellow Shifter, Blark. Even as Bree struggles with jealousy, she battles the nagging dread that Finn might be better off with someone less chronologically complicated. Her worst fear is confirmed when Finn becomes the kidnapper’s next victim. As Bree zeroes in on the culprit, they unravel her life one timeline-change at a time. She realizes that she alone has the power to save herself and everyone she loves. But to do that, she may lose Finn forever.

Favorite time travel inspirations!

Thank you so much for hosting me on your blog!

One of the hardest parts of writing time travel has been that I love the genre so much. There are so many amazing, fun, mind-bendy examples of time travel that I adore. In LOOP and TWIST, I wanted to pay homage to those, but I also wanted my world to be original.

That being said, here are some of my favorite time travel tales that have inspired me over the years:
1.) Back To The Future
 This was the first movie I truly remember seeing in the theater. I was seven years old, and my dad took my sister and I out to see it on a school night. (SCHOOL NIGHT!) A good 75% of the movie probably went straight over my head, but I didn’t care. I was in love.
The idea of going back in time and being able to change your own past…what? It blew my mind. Even today, I love dissecting the trilogy, looking for slip-ups and hiccups. That’s half the fun.
And, of course, hoverboards had to make a cameo in TWIST. Because hoverboards.

2.) Star Trek: First Contact
In all its incarnations, Star Trek has done time travel many times in many different ways. I’m a huge Trek fan, but I think this one is my favorite time travel. The Next Generation Enterprise gang goes back in time to the first instance of human’s traveling at warp speed—the speed of light. The Borg is about to wreak havoc and prevent them (Bo-org!) so, of course, it’s up to Picard and company to stop the Borg.
The reason I love it is that it holds up this iconic moment in history, and then shows the blunderings behind the scenes. I think that’s how a lot of big historical moments actually were and are—full of humans with all their imperfections. It doesn’t take away from the things we’ve achieved, and in some ways, I think it actually adds power to them. That beautiful things can be made out of our messes.

3.) Terminator
I think the thing I love about these movies is that they just keep…coming…back. That’s one of the great things about time travel. Don’t like the way the story ended? Ehh, just go back and change it.

4.)  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
This was my favorite of the movies and second favorite of the books (behind Goblet of Fire). I had already predicted that Hermione had a time-turner, and I remember being all smug about how smart I was, figuring out a sub-plot before it was revealed. But then the sub-plot ended up driving the entire plot. Didn’t see that coming, and I love it when time travel loops back on itself and reframes the story.

5.) The Time Traveler’s Wife
Confession: I’ve never read the book, only seen the movie. This one was fun, if a bit depressing. But…Eric Bana. Come on.

6.) Somewhere in Time
This is one of those classic gems that I didn’t discover until ten years ago when my hubby introduced me to it. Christopher Reeve is a modern day playwright who becomes obsessed with a popular stage actress in the early 1900’s (Jane Seymour). He time travels back to meet her by… dressing up in period costume and convincing his brain that he’s there. (Yeah, don’t overthink it.) It’s cheesy good fun, and last summer, my family went to Mackinac Island in Michigan where it was filmed. We stayed in the same hotel where the cast and crew stayed. We recreated our favorite scenes.
They don’t allow cars on Mackinac, and it genuinely feels like taking a step back in time. It’s always interested me how humans crave that experience of being immersed into history. One of TWIST’s subplots involved time travel tourism, and I thought of Mackinac while writing it.

7.) Groundhog’s Day
Some might quibble that this is an alternate reality loop rather than true time travel. Don’t care. I love this movie, and I love that he figures out how to cheat the system. I mean, who of us would be able to pass up the opportunity to know every question on Jeopardy? To invest that dollar in the stock market at just the right time? To impress the girl with how much you know about her before you’ve even really met? Oh, wait. I might be talking about Finn here.

Goodness…I could keep going. But Future Karen wants me to wrap it up and go eat some chocolate.

Thanks again for having me! I hope everyone has as much fun reading TWIST as I did writing it. :)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Karen Akins writes humorous, light sci-fi for young adults and the young in spirit. When not writing or reading, she loves lightsaber dueling with her two sons and forcing her husband to watch BBC shows with her.
Karen has been many things in her life: an archery instructor, drummer for the shortest-lived garage band in history, and a shockingly bad tic-tac-toe player.

WEBSITE  •  TWITTER  •  GOODREADS 

Thanks, Karen, for a wonderful post! I see some of my own favorites in there--Hermione's time turner, Groundhog Day, Somewhere in Time, and definitely Back to the Future!

The Tragic Age Blog Tour Excerpt

Hi everyone!  Today I'm happy to be participating in the blog tour excerpt reveal for

 The Tragic Age by Stephen Metcalfe!

 What it's about:

This is the story of Billy Kinsey, heir to a lottery fortune, part genius, part philosopher and social critic, full time insomniac and closeted rock drummer. Billy has decided that the best way to deal with an absurd world is to stay away from it. Do not volunteer. Do not join in. Billy will be the first to tell you it doesn’t always work— not when your twin sister, Dorie, has died, not when your unhappy parents are at war with one another, not when frazzled soccer moms in two ton SUVs are more dangerous than atom bombs, and not when your guidance counselor keeps asking why you haven’t applied to college.
　
Billy’s life changes when two people enter his life. Twom Twomey is a charismatic renegade who believes that truly living means going a little outlaw. Twom and Billy become one another’s mutual benefactor and friend. At the same time, Billy is reintroduced to Gretchen Quinn, an old and adored friend of Dorie’s. It is Gretchen who suggests to Billy that the world can be transformed by　creative acts of the soul.　

With Twom, Billy visits the dark side. And with Gretchen, Billy experiences possibilities.Billy knows that one path is leading him toward disaster and the other toward happiness. The problem is—Billy doesn’t trust happiness. It's the age he's at.  The tragic age. 

Stephen Metcalfe's brilliant, debut coming-of-age novel, The Tragic Age, will teach you to learn to love, trust and truly be alive in an absurd world.

All of us tour participants are giving readers a fun sneek peek into
The Tragic Age!

By following these links, you can happily read your way through the first 50 pages of the book!  Check it out:

Excerpt 1: Tuesday, February 3^rd: KellyVision

Excerpt 2: Saturday, February 7^th: Amaterasu Reads

Excerpt 3: Tuesday, February 10^th: The Young Folks

Excerpt 4: Friday, February 13^th: Unbound Books

Excerpt 5: Sunday, February 15^th: Books and Whimsy

Excerpt 6: Thursday, February 19^th: Stories & Sweeties

Excerpt 7: Monday, February 23^rd: As I Turn the Pages

Excerpt 8: Saturday, February 28^th: Novel Novice

And now, for the excerpt! :D 

 At the end of every day in front of good ol’ High School High, there’s always a line of vehicles clogging the street, waiting to pick up the younger kids who don’t have rides or are too lazy to walk. Most of these vehicles are pricey SUVs, and behind the wheel of each of them there’s usu- ally a distracted, impatient soccer mom while in the backseat are crying babies, barking dogs, pissed-off tod- dlers, and sullen middle schoolers.

Fact.

There are over fifty thousand automobile fatalities in the United States every year.

Fact.

Two hundred thousand died at Hiroshima. Conclusion.

A frazzled soccer mom in a five-thousand-pound sport utility vehicle is more dangerous than an atomic bomb. Really, they can get you anywhere, even in front of your own house. They can even be those who are closest to you.

Example.