I Got A New Tattoo!

Because apparently 14 was just not enough for me, buy information pills I just got #15 just a few days ago! This is actually a tattoo I’ve wanted for quite some time but I hadn’t had the means to make it happen and then I finally did, and honestly, it really came at the perfect time.

I am absolutely in love with the Rusk University series by Cora Carmack. I think it combines two things I just absolutely love: romance and football. Sports, in general. I’ve been wanting to write my own sports romance for quite a few years but didn’t know how to make it happen and I didn’t even know if someone would read it. I just finished Benched, a baseball romance back in September, early September, and I’m so happy with it. And its largely in part because of Cora and her series.

But its more than that too. Not only is she a huge inspiration and just a great friend, but she gave me three little words that I literally tell myself every single day. I got a wristband at RT back in May that says “no easy days” on it, and I wear it every single day. Well, I wore it every single day until a few days ago. Since May, and RT, my car has broken down, a guy had genuine feelings for decided I was not worth the risk, I lost my dream job, I continued to get so many rejections, got officially diagnosed with anxiety and I just felt miserable as hell. No direction, no happy ending in sight. I felt just…bad all the time.

And every single day, I told myself “no easy days, no easy days, no easy days”. Life isn’t easy, and not a day goes by that I don’t struggle with something, even if its just a tiny little something. But I work hard, and I believe in myself, most of the time, and I try so hard. And these words “No Easy Days” get me through. When I had a bad day, when I remembered that I only had a few bucks in my bank account and no job prospects and all of that…I would look at the bracelet and just keep going. That damn bracelet got to the point where the words were rubbed off and then Cora sent me a new one!

She’s awesome!

Now…things are so much better.

I have a job, and a job I like, on top of that. I am getting my book published. Things are shaping up. Things are getting much much better. I’m feeling MUCH happier and I know that not every single day is going to be good, but there are NO easy days and that’s okay.

And I finally got the tattoo, on my arm, in a place where I can see it every day. My best friend, Alex, has the tattoo as well, but her’s is on her bicep, in Cora’s writing. I immediately thought that was SUCH a great idea but then I thought…well I don’t want to copy Alex. We each have our own reasons for getting these words on us, and I want to make it my own. So I decided to get it tattooed on myself, in my own writing.

Means a lot to me to have it like that.

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Plus the amazing John Troeller at Classic Tattoo in Fullerton did an AMAZING job once again, so I’m quite happy with it.

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Apparently I make awkward, weird faces when I get tattoos. This was the most normal of all the faces that Alex captured on my camera. But I like this because of how silly I look…and because it shows that it literally didn’t hurt in the slightest.

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So red and puffy but so pretty! I’m so proud of it, and seriously stoked that I have decent handwriting or it would have come out SO weird…

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Me and my girl with our cute matching tattoos. I’m so glad we both got these. Like I said, different reasons but sort of centered on the same idea. These words mean a lot to us, and Cora means a lot to us and those books are just awesome.

So yeah, I just wanted to share my newest tattoo with you guys, because you guys love it and I love sharing my love of books with you AND on my skin.

Don’t forget, you can always share yours with me as well!

Book Review: Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

Genre: 

Young Adult, sildenafil Contemporary

Pages: 

364 pages

Part of a Series?:

Standalone Novel

Release Date: 

September 15th, 2015

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

iBooks

Author Website

GoodReads Summary: 

Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

My Review:

 

I was so incredibly impressed with the first book that I ever read by Julie Murphy. I do own her first book but honestly just haven’t had the chance to dive into it yet. Have you seen my TBR pile? Its massive!

Anyway, I had heard some really good things about Dumplin’ and I knew I eventually wanted to get my hands on it and was SERIOUSLY stoked when I got it in one of my OwlCrate boxes (You rock, OwlCrate). I decided that I needed to get on that right away and I did. And I read it fast.

Here’s the thing: I could sit here and tell you that its a great book about body positivity and that we should have more books like this and that it preaches self confidence and all this stuff. I could go on and on about that but I’m not going to.

Because even though that’s all true, very very true, there’s just so much to this book. I absolutely adore Willowdean. I love that she just sort of accepts the person that she is, and I love that. Willowdean is Willowdean. She’s big but that’s just the way it is. But she has insecurities and she has a hard time sometimes believing in herself or her own attractiveness but I never sit here and feel like its specifically because she’s fat. She has this because she’s a teenager and she’s going through the same shit that we all go through when we’re teenagers. THAT is what I love about it. Sure, we have body positivity, sure we have diversity with a character that isn’t perfect and pretty and skinny. But Julie doesn’t make it a big thing, not to me anyway.

Willowdean is a great, familiar, awesome character that just happens to be bigger and THAT is what makes it so good. She creates this character that is SO different from maybe what we’re used to in YA but we all connect with her because she feels so real and familiar. She has a shitty job and there’s a cute boy that can’t make up his mind about her and she’s like WTF (I’m 27 and I still deal with this crap…) and that’s what makes it so good. Creating diversity by making a diverse character who has these differences but connects with everyone…GENIUS.

I have no idea if I’m making any sense.

Basically, I totally loved this book. I adore Willowdean and kind of wish she was my best friend. She’s a great character and THAT is what makes this story so damn good. The story itself is great but Willowdean carries it and its definitely one of my favorites of the year.

 Rating: 

4.5 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: Flamecaster (ARC) by Cinda Williams Chima

Adrian sul’Han, known as Ash, is a trained healer with a powerful gift of magic—and a thirst for revenge. Ash is forced into hiding after a series of murders throws the queendom into chaos. Now Ash is closer than he’s ever been to killing the man responsible, the cruel king of Arden. As a healer, can Ash use his powers not to save a life but to take it?

This review is based on an advanced reader’s copy of the novel obtained through Edelweiss. This is in no way had an effect on the integrity of my review. Please note that published novel will differ from this ARC.

Continue reading

Book Review: Stand-Off by Andrew Smith

It’s his last year at Pine Mountain, and Ryan Dean should be focused on his future, but instead, he’s haunted by his past. His rugby coach expects him to fill the roles once played by his lost friend, Joey, as the rugby team’s stand-off and new captain. And somehow he’s stuck rooming with twelve-year-old freshman Sam Abernathy, a cooking whiz with extreme claustrophobia and a serious crush on Annie Altman—aka Ryan Dean’s girlfriend, for now, anyway.

Continue reading

THE AWAKENED Cover and Release Date Revealed!

I am SO insanely excited to share this with you today!

I’ve been counting down the days to revealing the official cover for The Awakened, tadalafil and to finally tell you when you can get your hands on this beauty!

As a reminder, my debut science fiction novel, The Awakened, is being published by the amazing BenjaminOfTomes through his brand new micro publishing company, OfTomes!

I’m insanely excited about this. I’m about to finally share the cover, and I’ll also share the synopsis. I’m going to add the links to my official author pages: website, instagram, twitter, etc, so please follow me on there. Then also click the link on GoodReads to add it to your TBR list!

All right now…

You ready for this…

I am SO SO SO ready for this…

Here it is!

The Official Cover Reveal!

Official Awakened CoverThis is the official front cover! This is what you will see when you buy it in ebook format!

Official Awakened Paperback Cover

This is what the entire paperback is going to look like!

ISN’T IT GORGEOUS!

I can’t handle how much I seriously LOVE it. This is MY book and it looks totally amazing. Sigh. Its beautiful. Mad props out to Kim at KimG Designs for making this absolutely beautiful and more than I could have ever hoped for!

The Official Release Date

December 1st, 2015!

And for those of you in Southern California, stay tuned for an official launch party!!

The Official Synopsis

Zoey Valentine is concerned with two things: surviving the multitude of self-defense classes her dad makes her take and avoiding Ash Matthews.

That is, until the Z virus hits, wiping out a third of the population in a matter of weeks. If that weren’t frightening enough, the bodies of the victims disappear and suddenly reappear, awakened from their dead state. They’re faster, smarter, and they work together to get the one thing they crave, human flesh.

The United States is in a panic and then the government decides the unthinkable: to bomb every major city overrun with the awakened.

Now Zoey is on the run, with her dad and Ash, desperate to find a place of safety amongst the ruined remains of the country.

Add it on GoodReads Now!

All My New Official Author Links

Please follow them!

My Website 

My Twitter

My Instagram

My NaNoWriMo

My Facebook

My GoodReads

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Thank you SO much for being a part of this! Stay tuned for more info on preorder, giveaways, and all sorts of awesome stuff coming soon!

Fall Book Challenge 2015!

Hello everyone! Welcome to a super fun, link super BOOKISH blog post today. I know that lately I have been spamming you like crazy with posts about MY book and I do apologize for that. I mean, I know you guys are JUST as excited as I am too, but let’s not forget about other peoples’ books, right?

Right.

So my dear best friend, Alex, from People Like Books, did a vlog recently where she came up with her OWN Fall Book Challenge, of questions. You can watch her video here. Of course, she tagged me. Now, I thought about doing a vlog buuuuuuut to be honest, I don’t have the time for it (editing sucks big time lol) and I’m a writer, so it’ll just work SO much better in an actual blog post.

So here we go! I’m going to answer the questions, and then tag a few people, and yeah, its going to be quite fun!

1) All time favorite book/series

Now, why don’t you start off with a harder question, Alex. Seriously? Really? This is SO hard.

Actually its not that hard. There are SEVERAL series of books that I like, and LOVE, but there is one series that sort of tops out all the rest of them and that is easily the Harry Potter series. I started reading those books when I was 10 years and I am now nearing on 28 years old so they’ve been a part of my life for a really long time. I could go on and on about what they did for me, but honestly, you guys know. They did what every good book does to me…but times a million.

2. Match Your Favorite Song with a Book

So my favorite song EVER is Konstantine by Something Corporate. And I tried really hard to think of a book that went with that but honestly it just didn’t. So I started to think of my other favorite songs…and basically it was just way too much thinking for me. An easy one is…one of my favorite songs by Fall Out Boy, Just One Yesterday. I absolutely love that song; it makes me SO happy and I belt it out like I can actually carry tune.

Fall Out Boy – Just One Yesterday 

Spoiler alert: I totally can’t.

But anyway, it reminds me of the first three books in the Mortal Instruments series, and especially City of Glass by Cassandra Clare. There is just something about that song that just reminds me of Jace and Clary and their love story and all the utter SHIT they go through together, but how they just keep ending back in the same spot. Its beautiful.

3. When You Buy Books, Do You Judge Them Based on Their Cover?

Question? Are there actually, legitimately, actually people who DON’T judge a book by their cover? I mean, are there really?

Maybe there are. But I do. I definitely do. Its kind of sucky too because in YA, there can be a LOT of crappy covers. Take for instance…the Lux series by Jennifer L Armentrout OR the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. HORRIBLE covers. Like…I cringe just thinking about how bad those covers are! But those series are actually seriously great, and it was because of the recommendations of trusted friends that I even read them (which cracks me up, now that I have a VA tattoo)

But honestly? Without a solid recommendation or whatever, if I see a cover that is just…I don’t know, sparkly, or cliche, or has two teens looking way too much in love or something, I don’t know, I’m going to have to pass. Covers are what draw my attention in, so of course they are going to be what completely repels me as well.

4. How Do You Treat Your Books

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I SHOW THEM LOVE. lol. I am very hard on my books. I know a lot of people like to give me a hard time about that but I say PSH on you. But I like to get rough with them. It just happens. I like to be comfortable when I read, so I bend the spines and I take them outside and I read while I eat so I spill food on them, and things like that. You can see above…that’s my favorite book, Trickster’s Choice, and I have torn it to pieces. AND I actually handed that over to Tamora Pierce to have her sign it too. Blasphemy? I think not. I have shown how much I absolutely love that book.

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5. All Time Favorite Author?

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That’s a hard question. I decided to narrow it down to four because come on, ONE?! There’s just no way. My top four would be JK Rowling, Tamora Pierce, Andrew Smith, and Cassandra Clare. These ones are basically what I consider my “auto-buy” authors…whatever they release, I’m there, and I buy it.

6. Name Only ONE Book You Would Recommend to People Who Never Read Books

This one is hard…because I feel like everyone is so different. What I might recommend to one person…it may not work at all for another person at all. But I think my go-to book, the one that immediately comes to mind when people ask me for book recommendations (which happens QUITE often)…is Winger by Andrew Smith.

Its just SO good, and its a fairly easy read and it just has so much. Its hilarious and its emotional at the same time, and its just easily one of my favorite books. I love that way that its written, it kind of shows those who normally don’t read that books don’t have to be so…formal? Is that the word I’m looking for? I have no idea haha. But its written casually and its hilarious and its my go-to recommendation.

7. What is a Book That You Wish had a Better Ending? 

Its funny because I have two…and they are the exact same ones as Alex.

The first one is Origin by Jennifer L Armentrout. This is the very last book in the Lux series. It just…it didn’t end like I had hoped it would. Everything was wrapped in this pretty little bow and it made me want to punch a wall or something. And spoiler alert: the characters get married and it just irritates me to NO end. Teens don’t need to get married…and it really added nothing to the actual plot line. I just thought the whole last book was a mess

The second one is City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare…god. I don’t even know what to say or where to start. Basically…that book was just the messiest, incredibly disappointing book. I expected heartbreak and death and all this stuff and it just didn’t deliver to me. Just further proof that City of Glass should have been the end…

8. Biggest Book on Your Bookshelf.

I’m pretty sure its City of Heavenly Fire. Its like 800 pages? Or some of my Harry Potter books are damn huge. Gone with the Wind might be as well, but its paperback so it doesn’t look quite as big haha! Its over 1000 pages though so it has to be the biggest one…

9. What are the First Two Books on Your Wishlist? 

*goes to look*

Well…technically the first two on my book wish list are the Infernal Devices and Mortal Instruments box sets because they have new covers…but that doesn’t really count haha.

So the next two are Queen of Shadows by Sarah J Maas

and Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray.

I gotta get those!

10. Do You Prefer e-Readers or real books? 

Look, I’m going to be that girl. I like both. I really do. Don’t get me wrong…I love books more, definitely. I love the smell, and the satisfaction of cracking the spine and I love seeing the beautiful beautiful covers and spines.

But I also read super stupid fast. So I love e-readers because I have all these CHOICES. I love that. I love that I can get early copies of books I love a little easier because I’ll accept a e-copy of it.

11. If you Could Live in Any Fictional World, Which Would You Choose?

I feel like this is cheating and its so obvious but its SO true. I would easily live in the world of Harry Potter. I’ve been reading that since I was 10 years old. I want to be a damn wizard already. I’m already convinced I am one ;)

12. Favorite October Read? 

I’m going to talk about two. One is A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. I love it because its very paranormal, very dark and romantic. It reminds me of the sort of autumn, creep, gothic, spooky feeling we get this time of year. The entire series is absolutely amazing and its one that’s fallen off a little over the past couple years but it should make a huge comeback because the covers are gorgeous and the series is just simple amazing.

The second one is one that I just read: Secrets in Phoenix by Gabriella Lepore. I swear to you, I’m not just mentioning it because she’s my author sis, and we’re published by the same company. Not at all lol. Her book is SO perfect for this month! Ben really picked the perfect title for his first release and in October. I LOVE it. Its spooky and dark and it has WITCHES in it, and you really can’t get better than that.

I lied. I have a third one. Jinx by Meg Cabot. I LOVE Meg’s books. Its a perfectly fun and witchy book and I absolutely ADORE it. I just remembered it right now. I love it, it has spells and a a jinx (hence the title) and a cute boy and all kinds of fun. UGH. Now I want to reread this book…

13. Favorite Snack to Have While You Read

Everything? Its hard to say because I literally eat and read at the same time ALL the time. Because if I’m wrapped up in the book, I don’t pause. Period. I just don’t. So everything? But some favorites are my iced green teas, hot cheetos and gobstoppers…not at all the same time though because that sounds seriously disgusting…

14. What book Feels Like a Knitted Sweater

I’m not sure if this is what Alex meant but the first book I thought of when I heard this question was Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Everything about that book screams comfort and cozy sweater and familiarity. Plus there’s this fall feeling to it and I’m not really sure why haha but I always think fall when I think Fangirl. But anyway, I’ve said before and I”ll say it another million times…Fangirl is a book that is incredibly close to my heart and to my personality and to me, period, so it is something that I would wear if I could make it into an article of clothing

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Thanks for reading guys and thanks Alex for tagging me. I’m tagging a few people below but feel free to do it whether or not I tagged you. Do it in a vlog like Alex or a blog like me, or whatever you so want. Just make sure to use the hashtag #FallBookChallenge15! And tag me and Alex (@peoplelikebooks) in it!

Happy Fall everyone!

Cassie and Erica at BookNerdBabes
Isabel at The Book Academy
Naif at Fanboyology
Jessica at Jesy’s Journal
Nicole at The Reader’s Antidote