“Why is it,” Jeffrey Sitwell asks, “that you want to become a guard?” Under the desk, my steel-toed boot taps against the floor. Unsteady fingers smooth my ponytail, they tug my blazer straight. The past two hours were spent celebrating; Emerald is now a professional fighter, though it was never in question, and Maggie is a writer for Compound Eleven’s paper. I am happy for my friends, but now it’s my turn. I take a steadying breath and glance around the small office where I sit, one located on the fourth floor where the guardship is housed. A concrete room, no decoration or ornament whatsoever. Nothing to distract me from the two men sitting across the table. One of them has black hair and black skin, and his name is Dirk Nkrumah. He wears the uniform of a guard, but he is no regular guard. He is the most senior guard of the compound, and I loathe him for this reason alone. Beside him is Sitwell, a man much older, a Preme, one dressed in a navy-blue suit with gold cufflinks, one with white hair and a sharply cut nose. The one in charge of Compound Eleven’s security. His skin…

I’m Marlene Perez and I’m here to give you a little hint of my new book, I’M WITH THE BANNED, the second book in my teen vampire trilogy with Entangled Teen.  I love a good title challenge! I is for intense. Tansy and Vaughn have always been friends, but there’s some intense relationship stuff Tansy has to figure out when Vaughn disappears for a month. M is for Mariotti. Tansy’s Granny Mariotti is a librarian-witch you don’t want to mess with. She’ll find you the perfect book and put a spell on you. * W is for werewolves. Tansy and her friends have to figure out who is killing werewolves before a vampire-werewolf war breaks out. I is for intimidating. T is for Tansy. The main character in I’m with the Banned is Tansy, a high school senior and the newly crowned queen of the vampires. She’s got a lot on her plate: a new boyfriend, a new title, and a new enemy. Or maybe it’s an old enemy. H is for Hecate, Tansy’s new and unusual pet. Hecate smells like burned marshmallows and brimstone. * T is for Travis, the lead singer of The Drainers and the vampire everyone…

I’m Vanessa Barneveld, and I’m so excited take on the famous Fresh Fiction Title Challenge! UNDER THE MILKY WAY is a paranormal YA romance that’ll make you believe in – and fall in love with – aliens. I can’t wait for you to meet the stars of my book, Cassidy and Hayden.    U is for unidentified flying object. Also more fashionably known as unidentified aerial phenomena. N is for nefarious black-ops projects, the kind that seem too outlandish to be true… D is for dance floor. When Hayden takes Cassidy for a spin at the homecoming dance, it’s not his two left feet that freak her out. Nope, she sees something much more frightening and otherworldly.  E is for extraspecialterrestrials, aka humans, who believe we are not alone in the universe. R is for risk. By getting involved with Cassidy, Hayden puts his whole existence at risk. At first, he vows to keep her at arm’s length, but… * T is for the virtual tractor beam that draws Hayden to Cassidy. He can’t drag himself away from her. But sticking together could endanger them both. H is for Hayden, who’ll move galaxies to save Cassidy. E is for extra-special-terrestrials…

I’m so excited to be here to talk a little bit about EMBER OF NIGHT! Ember of Night is a young adult paranormal romance about a girl from a broken home that has one goal in life—get her little sister away from their abusive father. If that wasn’t a hard enough task, a hot stranger comes into her life and tells her she’s the key to saving the world from a war between heaven and hell. But the world has never been kind to her, so who says it’s worth saving? E – E is for Electric. The chemistry between Draven and Harley is electric—even when they’re arguing 🙂 M – M is for Magical. Harley’s world is suddenly entrenched in magic when Draven opens her eyes to supernatural elements she never knew existed.  B – B is for Blurry. The lines between good and evil are blurred the more Harley learns about her new world.  E – E is for Edgy. Harley’s journey is not an easy one. It’s filled with sharp edges, fast drop-offs, and quick turns, but she meets each new challenge head on. R – R is for Rage. Because of Harley’s home life, she has…

one Roxy Brayburn and a broken heart 1974 Dear Mama, Losing Lucas has embittered me to the world, to every couple on the beach, Elle, Santa Maria, and even you. You’ve had twenty years with Daddy. Why didn’t I get that with mine? I expected to live with Lucas and Mayhem and maybe a whole bunch of babies for the rest of my life. But then Lucas jumped off the cliffs like he was late for an appointment. You know what that means. I can’t look at Elle after what she did, and if I have to fight this battle, cleanse my Brayburn blood, I have to do it away from here, where I can’t hear the water whisper, where I can’t feel its pull on my heart, never mind my body. I been thinking, Mama, Santa Maria is just like us, like Brayburns. It seems like a good, safe place for some free love and a party on the beach, but once you peel back the first layer, you realize it’s a lie, and what’s underneath is rotting and dirty. Spoiled, like meat that’s been sitting out too long. I know what you’re thinking: I’ll be a Brayburn wherever…

A question I get a lot, and I’m certain most authors and writers do, is ‘how do you manage to write novels?’. Growing up and getting into books relatively late compared to my peers, I used to ask myself that very same question. While I could imagine how people wrote movies, considering they are usually somewhere between ninety and a hundred and twenty minutes long, I couldn’t figure out how people wrote books. How did they fill hundreds of pages with words and somehow also make all of it interesting, especially to new readers, by which I don’t necessarily mean kids but rather anyone who picks up a book for the first time properly in general or after a long break? After working on my writing for a little over eight years I think I have an idea of what it takes to write a novel-length story and the four most important building blocks you’ll need. Of course, there is a lot of other smaller factors, but these are the basics. Inspiration + Creativity + Skill + Determination/Endurance Without some kind of inspiration, no skill or determination or even creativity will be quite able to help you fill out fifty…

I get asked a lot of questions as a writer, but one of the most common ones is what my process for writing each story looks like. Because I’m an organized soul, it’s typically the same for each book. I’m here today to share what that process looks like for me. I’ve written a lot of stories over the years, and after the first several, I started to develop a process that worked for me as I created a story from beginning to end. The beginning doesn’t start with writing, it starts with plotting. In fact, it just starts with an idea. A big idea. For example, with STING, I thought of one of my favorite classic stories, The Count of Monte Cristo, and knew I wanted to write a retelling. But I wanted to have a female heroine and a dystopian twist. So first I get my big idea. Then I test it. Testing it means making sure there’s a big enough conflict to sustain a whole story with twists and turns. With STING, it was a little easier because I wanted to stick close to the original plot, but typically I figure it all out from scratch. I…