Showing posts with label #YoungAdult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #YoungAdult. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2016

#Interview #GiveAway - Average Joe and the Extraordinaires by Belart Wright



Average Joe and the Extraordinaires
by Belart Wright


Belart Wright will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner during the tour.Please use the RaffleCopter below to enter. Remember you may increase your chances of winning by visiting the other tour stops. You may find those locations here.


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Interview:

Crystal: Today I have the pleasure of hosting Belart Wright. Welcome Belart! Thank you so much for joining us today.  Would you share a little bit about yourself with us today?

Belart: Sure, I’m Belart Wright a recently self-published indie author.  Right now writing is purely a hobby, because I work two jobs to pay the bills.  Eventually my goal is to work on my books full time and release them more often.  I am 26 years old and currently reside in Detroit Michigan.  I’m also a huge gamer, when I can find time for it with an unhealthy fascination with the Legacy of Kain series.

Crystal:  Do you have a favorite scene you would like to share with us?

Belart: Sure, I’ll try to keep it short.  It’s a scene from Average Joe and the Extraordinaires featuring the mystery girl Liandra.

“She changed her direction and headed for the city of Tallahassee which was at least a three hour drive away, without craftes anyway.  Grabas’ main office was there near the Capitol.  She found herself lacking in patience today and a three hour drive just wouldn’t cut it.  She gripped her handlebars tightly and summoned forth the bulk of the Life Force inside of her in a huge fiery aura that surrounded her body and bike in a fine spiritual mist.  She focused on the aura and condensed it to make it more form fitting for herself and her motorcycle.

Afterwards she used a crafte to make both herself and the bike almost completely intangible.  The particles that made up the two were more like vapor than anything else, but vapor that was bonded together and hard to separate.  Now whatever objects or people she came into contact with wouldn’t affect her at all.  She took it a step further and made her and her motorcycle invisible as well.  It was all a matter of visualization for her and she had a really good imagination to make all of this possible.
As she drove down the highway, she passed through other cars with ease.  Whenever she came into contact with them her bike and her body would disperse briefly then quickly connect and reform just like fog.  The hardest part of it all was keeping her disbursement of Life Force at an even level so that she wouldn’t use up so much more than she was absorbing from the air and generating from her own body.

She knew it would become more difficult with the Life Force her next crafte would take.  She gripped her handlebars as tight as should could again and accelerated as much as she could.  The bike had only taken her up to two hundred and six miles per hour at its top speed which still wasn’t fast enough.  She could barely feel the wind, being nearly intangible and all so she pumped a tremendous amount of Life Force into the engine which spread throughout the bike and altered the machinery within it.  All the metal and leather on the bike crackled with Liandra’s Life Force energy.  In no time, it lost its physical form and became a pure Life Force creation.  She was able to see through her invisibility crafte and saw that the body of the bike was made of a spectral purplish energy that seemed to ripple wildly.  The two tires spun furiously and looked like balls of arced lightning.

She and her ghost bike burst forth, unaffected by the wind, passing through cars and other solid structures in fractions of a second as she pushed upwards of five hundred miles per hour.  She cut her initial travel time to a mere fraction with her mystical methods.”

Crystal:  Where did you come up with the idea for Average Joe and the Extraordinaires?

Belart: It came from a thought and a challenge to myself.  Can you write a book about an ordinary guy in a world with characters far more extraordinary?  The idea and concept changed a lot over the years though.  I mention it a little at the end of the book.

Crystal:   What are you currently working on?

Belart: I am currently writing a new series of LitRPGs based on virtual reality videogames called Hell’s Glitch: An Escape From Adventure.  Besides that, I am currently editing the sequel to Average Joe and the Extraordinaires, called Average Joe and the Beauty.

Crystal:   Do you have any special routine that you follow when you are writing? 

Belart: I just make sure to write whenever and wherever I can whether it be on the bus, before work, on a lunch break, at parties, while waiting for a date, etc.

Crystal:   Did you have to do a lot of research for this book or any other? If so do you have a fascinating fact that you have learned you would like to share with us?

Belart: Basically every chapter of the book has some part of it that I needed to research.  With the scene above, I had no clue what the basic top speed of a motorcycle was until I researched a certain motorbike.  Thanks to that, I know all sorts of random facts about motorcycles, such as the fact that there was a truce between motorcycle manufacturers to limit their bikes to 186 mph in the 2000s.

Crystal:   Who are some of your favorite authors that you like to read?

Belart: My all-time favorite authors are J.K.Rowling, George R.R. Martin, Amy Hennig, and Yoshihiro Togashi.  Now I am a fan of a few indie authors as well, namely Christina McMullen, Alexandra Engellmann, Alex McKechnie, Matt Doyle, and Kelly St. Clare.

Crystal:   Is there a genre you haven't written that you would like to try?

Belart: Oh, of course.  There’s a lot of genres I’d like to write in.  My latest book, Hell’s Glitch, is written in a totally new genre called LitRPG.  I’m learning a lot about the LitRPG genre and am reading books in the genre as well.  I plan to read a lot more LitRPG books in 2016.  It’s a really fun and unique genre to write in and it blends two of my favorite things in the world: books and videogames.


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BLURB: 

On a dark and balmy Floridian night, a strange and mysterious dark haired woman stalks the shadows of the local college football stadium, on the prowl for secrets buried deep beneath the Earth. These secrets, she knows, may change everything including this small town.

While knocking back illegal drinks with his friends at the hallowed Orangetown Pickers' college football stadium, average kid Joe Black finds himself desperately trying to save the life of a beautiful dark haired woman after a deadly explosion violently interrupts his fun and games. While trying to fathom why he would even do something so reckless he soon finds himself entangled in a dangerous game of terrorist plots, mistaken identities, hard boiled detectives, the criminal underworld, and of all things magic as he tries to escape with his life and make sense of it all.

Joe faces many challenges from all new enemies, assassins, and even his own friends. Can Joe navigate all this danger, escape with his life, and handle his biggest challenge to date, finding something about himself that is truly extraordinary? Find out within the pages of Average Joe and the Extraordinaires.

GENRE: Action Adventure, Young Adult, Urban Fantasy

Amazon Buy Link

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EXCERPT:

Joe could feel more sweat beading on his forehead.  He didn’t back away from Blonsky’s stare despite his own fear.  He couldn’t.  He just wasn’t taught that way.  His mom, dad, granddad, and grand-mom had all taught him to never back away from a stare.  A man is only as good as his handshake and if he can look another man in the eye without flinching, his granddad had always said. It was somewhat of a family motto.

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AUTHOR Bio and Link:

Belart Wright was born and raised in Detroit Michigan with a short but adventurous stint in St. Ignace during his childhood. Always poor, Belart had to learn to use his imagination to fuel the fun he had. Whether it was drawing cool and dangerous looking heroes to creating fully fledged storylines with his action figures to writing stories about kids similar to himself with fantastic abilities and destinies, Belart was always an expert in delving into other worlds that were not his own.

Always naturally talented at writing, it took the advice of his brother, and a little creative boost from his high school creative writing teacher to get him to realize that writing was something he could do really well and pursue as a career. To this day he revels in building worlds and characters from the ground up such as the worlds of Hell Warriors, Story of K, Cyborgs and Deadmen, and Pannam which are all working titles.


In his spare time Belart tries to update his two blogs whenever he can, but mostly just ends up writing or editing. As a huge gamer he plays a lot of games online and off with his favorites at the time being Borderlands 2, Phantasy Star Online, X-Men Legends, and Dark Souls. He just wishes he had more time to whittle his impossibly long gaming list down which goes all the way back to PS1 and Sega Genesis classics. He and his buddies at FlubberKnuckle Studios are also working on several new game IPs. He is also patiently waiting for the next installment of the superb Legacy of Kain series.

Personal: http://www.belartscorner.blogspot.com
Story Blog: http://www.belartsstories.blogspot.com
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+BelartWright/posts
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11327592.Belart_Wright
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Belart-Wright/e/B00R8ZPET2/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016

#GiveAway - The X Factor:Confession of a Naïve Fashion Model by Ivan Sivec


 The X Factor: 
Confession of a Naïve Fashion Model 
by Ivan Sivec


Ivan will be awarding a free e-copy of the X Factor or a signed greeting card from Slovenia (international) to a randomly drawn winner during the tour. Please use the RaffleCopter below to enter. Remember you may increase your chances of winning by visiting the other tour stops. You may find those locations here

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BLURB:

It takes three mistakes to be swallowed up and spat out by the fashion industry. 
You trust the wrong people. 
You think you know everything there is to know about life. 
You abuse drugs. 

The almost 18-year-old Maja is a regular high-school kid, who at the threshold of adulthood thinks she knows everything there is to know about life. As she enters the world of fashion modelling she gets completely enchanted. 

However, the more her career thrives she’s less able to see the danger lurking around fashion industry.  Maja starts falling in a downward spiral of drug addiction and is torn between the tempting dream of becoming a world famous model and the horrendous thought of destroying her body beyond the point of no salvation. 

At a yacht party Maja gets drugged, assaulted and tossed overboard. She’s found the next day. Barely alive. Only a shade of her former self, in a gray space between life and death, she realises the fashion industry sucked everything out of her – except one thing – the will to live. Maja wants to be her old self again. 

Ironically, it means losing the only thing that made her special. She has to give up on her hidden X Factor. 

The X Factor: Confession of a Naïve Fashion Model is a psychological YA novel showing the glamorous fashion world behind its less glamorous scenes.

GENRE: Young Adult

Buy Links: 
Amazon | Kobo | B&N 

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EXCERPT:

On the evening of the third day the agent Maurizio paid them a visit. They didn’t have any money or food, so they begged him to lend them a couple of euros to buy lunch at McDonald’s. He didn’t want to hear anything about that.

“I came to make sure you’re successfully losing weight. In Milan there’s currently somewhere between two hundred and three hundred too many models, and the ones that don’t respect the rules will be fired without compensation of any sort.”

They curled up and managed to convince themselves they didn’t even need yoghurt. They stayed determined even after Maurizio had left.

Later Maja and Svetlana found out that Maurizio had locked them in the apartment, so they weren’t able to leave, even if they had somehow been able to beg for some food money.

They managed it until midnight.

But at 00.30am Svetlana suddenly jumped up from her sleep.

“Maja, are you asleep? I can’t sleep. I’m going crazy from hunger.”

“Don’t even start on food,” Maja grumbled. “My vision is blurred. I’ll probably die tonight. I’ll die of hunger.”

“I’ll die, too. We’ll both die of starvation.”


At 1am they started banging on the door: “Open, please! We’re dying of starvation. Help!”

There wasn’t a living soul to be found anywhere. It seemed like there was nobody in the neighbouring apartments and the shops downstairs were already closed. Maja started looking for the business card. She would call that famous director. She’d ask him to bring them half a loaf of bread. She’d do whatever he wanted as long as he saved their lives.

“No, don’t do it! You know Monica will be mad. For now we belong to Milleuno. We cannot make contact with anyone outside the agency. We cannot go out. We cannot meet anyone. We have to take care of everything by ourselves or with the help of the agency.”

At 2am they were in such crisis they were rolling around with cramps. Maja had never experienced something like this before. She felt like she was about to die any moment now.

“I don’t want to die!” Svetlana made one last effort to get up and swayed to the window. 

“Quickly, pass me the bed sheet!”

It was like in a film.

An entertaining film for the good children.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Ivan Sivec is a writer, poet and publicist from Slovenia, Europe. People say he is ‘a man with a hundred stories’ and he has been sharing them with his audience, both young and mature, for over four decades now. He is listed under the top five Slovenian bestselling authors. 

In his rich and thriving career he has written in many genres. As a poet he has written more than 2,500 lyrics for ethnic and entertaining music for which he received several awards. His broad prosaic ‘repertoire’ includes biographies, historical, psychological and adventure novels, travelogues, youth book series, picture books as well as humorous stories. To this date he published over 130 books and is considered to be one of the most popular Slovenian authors. 

His particular interest goes to psychological novels on issues teenagers face today, especially topics like suicide, drug addiction, adoption, AIDS...  He shares true stories to let the young reader know they’re not alone.

Sivec devotes his free time to his wife of 44 years, their two children and three grandchildren. Since his retirement a decade ago he enjoys his days hiking the Alpine peaks (he is especially proud to have conquered the tallest mountain in Europe, the French Mont Blanc (4,810 m/ 15,771 ft), together with his daughter-in-law Tina). When he is not gathering inspiration from the mountains he is soaking in the tranquility of the Mediterranean Sea with his wife.  Nature is his source of creativity. It allows Ivan to gather his thoughts and pour them onto paper.  

Official Webpage | Facebook | Facebook Book Page | Twitter | Goodreads Author Page | Goodreads Book Page 

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