Tag Archives: Young Adult

February 5, 2013

Girls & Monsters’ Peekaboo

By Anne Michaud

A giant spider, a killer mermaid, a mad neighbor, zombies and a very dark soul – monsters, everywhere. Wanna see what girls can do to them? Check out my collection of 5 dark novelettes. Here’s a peek at DEATH SONG…

girls&monstersSomething catches in the back of my throat. I hide my face in my hands to quiet the sobs. But then, something ain’t right. Air moves around me and I stop. I look between my fingers, but the blur of my tears thickens everything: the bathtub, the towels, and someone on the floor.
A woman’s in here with me, door still closed and locked. An exhale, like after a deep swim, and a smell, like the swamp close to my empty home. A chill runs down my back, I wipe my eyes, rub and scratch them to see more clearly. And I do.
Two gray hands scratch the floor tiles, nails green with algae, putrid flesh sagging on her legs, arms and torso, hair so long and wet and heavy, it drags her down. Diluted, impossible to focus on, like little waves rippling over her body from head to foot, seaweed in the water. Scales and fins, mermaidlike, little knives, those are. And they scrape the floor, like a fork on a plate. It’s her—Limnade.

She opens her mouth of scissor-teeth and the rotten smell of fish wraps around my throat like two hands trying to choke me. “You can’t be…” I don’t finish my breathless thought and jump backward, knocking over the dish of decorative soaps. Blurry waves, vision impaired, out of focus, unreal. She crawls toward me, eyes unblinking, lethal, hands inches from me: my legs refuse to move, as my body feels like stone. Frozen, hypnotized, a statue. Then I hear something coming from within her…
A melody, reminding me of something lost, tickles my ears. It drags on until the sweetness turns sickly, vibrating into a full-on super-scream, hyenalike, enough to pop my ears and make them bleed. Her large mouth deforms her face into one gap of black, the cry so high and strident, I scream from the pain.
Limnade stares at me, everything but her fades away—Jo’s nice bathroom, Jo’s new life, Jo himself, none of it matters anymore. Her fingers brush my forehead, they’re cold and sticky like clams. And I let the darkness take me away.

Goodreads

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Good Book, Highly recommended, YA

January 23, 2013

Cover Reveal: The Forgotten Ones by Laura Howard

By Anne Michaud


Title: The Forgotten Ones

Author: Laura Howard

Genre: NA Paranormal Fantasy Romance

Expected release date: May 15, 2013

Age Group: New Adult

Cover Designer: Stephanie Mooney

Book Description:


Allison O’Malley just graduated from college. Her life’s plan is to get a job and take care of her schizophrenic mother. She doesn’t have room for friends or even Ethan, who clearly wants more.

When Allison’s long-lost father shows up, he claims he can bring her mother back from the dark place her mind has sent her. He reveals legends of a race of people long forgotten, the Tuatha de Danaan, along with the truth about why he abandoned her mother.

 

 

Share on Facebook and/or Twitter and you could win a $50 Amazon (or B&N) Gift card!

 

4 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Good Book, Highly recommended

January 16, 2013

Chatting with…Amy Bartol

By Anne Michaud

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When an author has a new book coming out, I’m always curious as to what inspired them for the story, so I jumped on Amy’s blog tour wagon and invited her to tell us more about Incendiary ♥

AB: In 2007, my best friend, Molly, had sent me a book for my birthday.  It was entitled:  I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak.  The book is about Ed Kennedy, an underage cabdriver who has a coffee-drinking dog named The Doorman and a secret crush on his best friend Audrey.  Ed has a peaceful routine until the day he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.  After that day, Ed becomes the messenger.

The book, written in the first person present tense, was funny and heart pounding and sad and euphoric.  It read like you could step into Ed’s shoes, breathe his air, see what he is seeing.  In short, it was amazing.  But, there was a message at the end of the story that struck me as if it was written just for me.  It says, quote: “Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of…I’m not the messenger at all. I’m the message.”

I knew instantly that I had to try to write a book because maybe I was able to live beyond what I always thought I was capable of.

At the time, I didn’t realize I wanted to be a “writer;” I only knew that I wanted to see if I could produce a story worth reading.  I know it sounds counterintuitive because you’d think that it would be a logical conclusion that I wrote a book so I could be a writer, but for me, it was more like I became a writer because I had to write a book—I had to tell a story.  I didn’t have“be a writer” aspirations, maybe I did when I was younger, but when I began writing Inescapable there was no real fantasy of becoming an author. Inescapable just began as an experiment to see if I could write a book—I wanted to see if I was capable of writing a story and then LIKING what I wrote.

Incendiary Book CoverThe inspiration to write about angels came about while I was reading “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. I stumbled across a stanza that had the word “Seraphim” in it.  I was annoyed that I didn’t know exactly what that word meant because I’m preoccupied with words.  I googled it and found that Seraphim are angels, and not just any angels; they’re the highest rank of angels in Heaven.  Angels have ranks?  I had thought.  Really?  I did some research and discovered that a theologian in the fifth century named Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite wrote about a hierarchy of angels.  The angels from my stories are loosely based on Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings, but I took a lot of poetic license in my writing.

It took me several more months to work out that I could do it, that I could write.  I kept saying to Tom (my husband), “I should write a book, don’t you think?  Do you think I should write a book?  What if I wrote a book?”  Finally, Tom gave me his MacBook and said, “Here, write a book!” Translation: Sheesh, woman, stop bugging me! * (But in a cute, sweet way.)

He never got that laptop back.

I named the first file: Here We Go.  I began to write with the thought that it was just for me and that I would never show it to anyone—it was just an experiment to see if I could do it.  That mindset gave me the freedom to write anything I wanted.  Everything I wanted.  I was under no obligation to censor it in any way because, hey, I was the only one who would ever read it, right?

It was ON.

Soon after I started writing, I began to hear the characters I created.  Literally. They would wake me up in the middle of the night—talking.  (I know it’s weird, but really, really cool, too.  BTW, Russell talks the most and is always the funniest.)  I call whatever it is that happens “catching the stream” because once I began to hear the characters speak, it was like I was floating easily down a river.  I just had to type what they (the characters) said.  They sometimes took me places I never expected the story would go.  It was literally like I was watching a movie in my mind and I just needed to describe it in words so that it made sense on paper.

Then, in about four months, I finished it. (The rough draft, that is.)

A strange daring happened to me after that:  I let the story escape from my computer and into the dreams of others…and now I can’t stop writing. I can’t wait to tell you what happens next…

amybartol*** You can catch Amy on her blog, she also tweets**

5 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Good Book, Highly recommended

November 12, 2012

Chatting with… Rosanne Rivers

By Anne Michaud

This week is a double treat: interview + cover reveal of Rosanne Rivers, a debut YA author!

After the Fear

In Sola’s city, everyone obeys the rules. Stay away from the trigger cameras and regularly update your Debtbook, and you just might survive. But having to watch the way criminals are dealt with—murdered by Demonstrators in the Stadium—is a law Sola tries to avoid. When a charming Demonstrator kisses her at a party, however, she’s thrust into the Stadium and forced into the very role she despises.

Armed with only natural resourcefulness and a caring nature, Sola narrowly survives her first bout. Her small success means she’s whisked off to a training camp, where she discovers a world beyond the trigger cameras and monitoring—a world where falling in love with a killer doesn’t seem so terrible.

Yet life as a Demonstrator has no peace. Sola must train her way through twenty-five more Demonstrations before she can return home to her father. At the end of each battle, only one survivor remains.

Sola could face anyone in the Stadium . . . even a loved one.

Ladies and gents, here’s Rosanne Rivers.

RR: Hi!

What’s your book about and where did you get the idea for it?

RR: Well the book is set in England in the year 2099, where Roman-style gladiatorial battles are the government’s way of raising money to pay off the nation’s enormous monetary Debt. It follows Sola as she trains to become one of the top fighters (Demonstrators) in England, falls in love, discovers unlikely secrets and deals with the oppressive society she lives in.

As mundane as it sounds, I actually got the idea from the huge deficit England has at the moment! Politicians are always going on about it over here. I liked the idea that when you’re born, you’re already born with a personal debt that you can be called upon at any time to pay off. When it came to how someone was going to pay this off, I looked to football. There’s so much money in it, it’s crazy. No matter how much debt we’re in, we’ll always find a way of spending money on the things we like. So I made football matches into Roman-style one-on-one battles, and in my book that’s the hobby which everyone loves and is willing to spend money on.

For the rest of the society, (trigger cameras/ a mandatory social networking site called Debtbook etc) I just looked at the world we already live in. When I started writing, the government in England were talking about introducing cameras which activate when they hear certain ‘trigger’ words. And then there’s Facebook, which fits so perfectly into a dystopian world that it’s scary! Every element in my book is from something which I could see happening in the future, but sometimes it’s an augmented version.

Love this – you actually pluck inspiration from actual events…oh so scary, we’re this close to a dystopian world coming to life, me thinks.

My favorite movies/books have always been dystopian: 1984, Blade Runner, Brazil, Hunger Games trilogy…which stories would you consider your favorite and how did they play in your own writing for this book?

RR: Yeah it is a bit scary . . . yet so much fun to write about!

Oh I haven’t read Blade Runner or Brazil, I’ll have to check them out! My favourite dystopian books have to be The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale and Delirium, (with Inside Out and Uglies coming in very close, too!). I’m a bit slow to the game but I’ve just start reading Divergent, which is awesome. I think the dystopian trend certainly gave me the confidence to write and finish this book. Before The Hunger Games, I would have worried that no one wanted to read about a killer teenager! Once I had the idea, a lot of my inspiration came from history books and tales of gladiators. The camp in ATF is very much based on a Roman ludus, with lots of the training techniques being adapted versions of those used by gladiators.

Cool beans, bringing in History into your books…which makes me wonder, what’s your next project? Will you stay in the futuristic genre or jump trains?

RR: I’m so glad you asked. I’m just in the research and plotting stage of my next book . . . It’s a YA fantasy following a young woman who is part of an all-female organised crime gang. So it’s a detour from the futuristic genre, but there will still be lots of fighting. This time though, I’m hoping to get the reader on side with the ‘baddies’, because let’s face it, we all have a dark side!

Rosanne lives in Birmingham, UK and considers it one of her favourite cities, second only to Rome. She delights in writing for children and young adults and hopes to bring readers to an unfamiliar yet alluring setting. Rosanne was inspired to write when she read the Harry Potter books, and at age fourteen, she wrote romance fanfiction on just about every pairing you could dream up from the HP series.

She blogs, she tweets, she has a Facebook page, and so does her book – don’t miss out and subscribe to be notified about After the Fear ♥

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Good Book, Highly recommended, YA

November 5, 2012

Don’t Fear Michelle Muto’s Reaper…

By Anne Michaud

I’ve meet her through an online writing group, this girl who writes about death and magic. So I thought you lot would *love* to learn a little bit more about the book that got Michelle on Amazon’s number two spot last Halloween: Don’t Fear the Reaper.

Haunted by memories of her murdered twin, Keely Morrison is convinced suicide is her only ticket to eternal peace. But in death, she discovers the afterlife is nothing like she expected. Instead of peaceful oblivion or a joyful reunion with her sister, Keely is trapped in a netherworld on Earth with only a bounty-hunting reaper and a sarcastic demon to show her the ropes.

When the demon offers Keely her ultimate temptation–revenge on her sister’s killer–she must determine who she can trust. Because, as Keely soon learns, the reaper and demon have been keeping secrets and she fears the worst is true–that her every decision changes how, and with whom, she spends eternity.

And now, a belated Halloween treat – the book’s first chapter…

First Chapter:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for they are with me.

I repeated my version of the psalm as I watched the ribbon of blood drift from my wrist. I’d hoped it would be a distraction—something to stop me from wondering what my sister’s dying thoughts had been. Exhaling slowly, I let the emptiness consume me.

Jordan had kept my secrets and I had kept hers. In the end, it came down to just one secret between us that took her life. Now, it would take mine. I should have said something, but nothing I said or did now could bring her back or make anyone understand what she meant to me.

Are you here, Jordan? Are you with me? Tell me about heaven…

I told myself Jordan was gone, never coming back, but her memories continued to haunt me. I had no idea if there even was an afterlife. If God existed, I was convinced he had given up on me. Not once did I sense he’d heard a single one of my prayers. I wasn’t asking for the world—I only wanted to know if my sister was safe and at peace. What was so hard about that?

She should still be here. It wasn’t fair.

I’d been the difficult one—much more than Jordan. For a while, I’d even gotten into drugs. Mom and Dad had worried I’d get Jordan into drugs, too. But I wouldn’t. Not ever. Besides, that part of my life had been over long before Jordan’s death. A small gargoyle tattoo on my left shoulder was all that remained of my previous lifestyle.

Mom and Dad started treating me differently after Jordan’s funeral two months ago. She and I were twins, so I understood how hard it was for them to look at me and not see her. Sometimes, they wouldn’t look at me at all. Mom went to the psychiatrist, but no one asked if I needed to talk to someone about what happened. No one asked if I needed sleeping pills or antidepressants. Yeah, sure. Don’t give the former addict pills of any sort.

Not one person saw the all-consuming suffering that gnawed at my soul. Why couldn’t anyone see? Jordan had been more than my sister—she’d been my Samson, my strength. I would have done anything for her, and yet, I’d failed her. I wasn’t the one who’d killed her, but I might as well have been. How could I ever live with that? My heart had a stillness to it since her death.

I shall fear no evil.

I couldn’t very well recite the first part of Psalm 23 because it said I shall not want, and I did want. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted my sister back. Clearly, goodness and mercy were never going to be part of my life ever again. In my mind, I saw myself walking through the iron gates of hell with demons cackling gleefully all around.

I didn’t want to die. Not really. I was just tired and didn’t know of another way to stop the pain. Doctors removed a bad appendix. Dentists pulled rotten teeth. What was I supposed to do when my very essence hurt, when the cancer I’d come to call depression made every decent memory agonizingly unbearable?

Before I’d gotten down to cutting my wrist (I managed to only cut one), I’d taken a few swigs of Dad’s tequila—the good kind he kept in the basement freezer. I’d used another swig or two to chase down the remainder of Mom’s sleeping pills in the event I failed to hit an artery or vein. Then I’d set the bottle on the ledge of the tub in case I needed further liquid encouragement. Instead of using a knife or a razor, I attached a cutting blade to my Dad’s Dremel. The Dremel was faster, I reasoned. More efficient.

It would have been easier to OD, I suppose. But I felt closer to my sister this way, to suffer as she’d suffered.

I recited the line from Psalms 23 again. It had become my personal mantra.

The words resonated in my parents’ oversized bathroom. I’d chosen theirs because the Jacuzzi tub was larger than the tub in the hall bathroom. Jordan and I used to take bubble baths together in this same tub when we were little.

Innocence felt like a lifetime ago. I searched the bathroom for bubble bath but came up short. Soap might have made the laceration hurt more so it was probably just as well. Besides, the crimson streaming from my wrist like watercolor on silk was oddly mesmerizing.

The loneliness inside proved unrelenting, and the line from the psalms made me feel better. I prayed for the agony inside me to stop. I argued with God. Pleaded. But after all was said and done, I just wanted the darkness to call me home.

I tried not to think of who would find my body or who’d read the note I’d left. I blamed myself not only for failing Jordan, but for failing my parents, too.

My lifeline to this existence continued to bleed out into the warm water. Killing myself had been harder than I’d imagined. I hadn’t anticipated the searing fire racing through my veins. I reached for the tequila with my good arm but couldn’t quite manage. Tears welled in my eyes.

Part of me foolishly felt Jordan was here. The other part feared she wasn’t.

Give me a sign, Sis. Just one.

I imagined seeing my parents at my funeral—their gaunt faces, red-eyed and sleepless. How could I do this to them? Wasn’t the devastation of losing one child enough?

No. Stop. A voice in my head screamed. Don’t do this. Don’t. Please…

I shifted my body, attempted to get my uncooperative legs under me. I could see the phone on my parents’ nightstand. I could make it that far. Had to. The voice was right. I didn’t want to do this. I felt disorientated, dizzy. Darkness crept along the edges of my vision. Focusing became difficult. A sweeping shadow of black caught my attention. Someone stood in the bathroom—not my sister. A man. Had I managed to call 911? I couldn’t remember getting out of the tub. And why’d I get back in? Did I use a towel?

Mom is going to be pissed when she sees the blood I’ve tracked all over the bedroom carpet.

“I’m sorry,” I told the man in black.

“It’s okay, Keely. Don’t be afraid.” Not my father’s voice. It was softer, with a hint of sorrow. Distant. Fleeting. Later, I’d feel embarrassed about this, but for now I was safe from the nothing I’d almost become. My teeth clattered from the chill. My eyelids fluttered in time with my breaths. The tub water had turned the color of port wine. The ribbons, the pretty, red watercolor ribbons were gone.

Dull gray clouded my sight.

A voice whispered to me, and my consciousness floated to the surface again.

“—okay, Keely.”

Cold. So cold.

“I’m right here.”

There was no fear in me as the man bent forward, his face inches from mine. He was my father’s age, and yet strangely older. His eyes were so…blue, almost iridescent. The irises were rimmed in a fine line of black, and the creases etched at the corners reminded me of sunbeams as he gave me a weak smile. The oddly. Dressed. Paramedic. A warm hand reached into the water and cradled mine. My fingers clutched his. I sighed, feeling myself floating, drifting. Light—high and intense exploded before me. No! Too much. Too much! I shuddered and labored to catch my breath, but it wouldn’t come.

Finally, the comfort of darkness rose to greet me.

Don’t forget to buy the book, visit Michelle’s blog, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook🙂

Amazon US

Amazon UK

B&N

iTunes

5 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Good Book, Highly recommended, YA

October 15, 2012

Drum-roll, please…

By Anne Michaud

I fell in love with writing in my tiny flat in Zone 2, London. It was a freezing cold night, a draft came from the single-glazed bay window of that old Edwardian front room I called my home, my fingers danced on the keyboard as words flew out, when I realized: I wouldn’t be doing anything else, right now.

Then came the Master’s in screenwriting diploma a year later. When people asked if anything happened with the scripts I’d been writing,  I replied of course not, I knew no one in Montreal, had been gone too long, lost touch, etc. So, during the two next years, I made my own short films: produced, directed, wrote – and hated it. They never were as good as what I had written, even if they were distributed and sold to TV.

Novels, I told myself. I’ll write novels, get them published, and be happy – but agents got in the way. Five years, seven projects, and about 500 rejection letters later, I still haven’t found one. Oh, I’ve gotten advice and cheers and encouragement, some said my writing was beautiful, I knew how to build up a scene, they admired me and loved my work…but no one wanted to represent me.

What is a girl to do? How do I get published without waiting another year or two to get an agent, then the rewrites, then the submission to publishing houses? Well, I sent my query to the best small publishers my research provided…

AND GIRLS & MONSTERS IS GETTING PUBLISHED BY DARKFUSE IN 2013!!!

Cheers to you all, I’m having a drink right this moment 🙂 I never thought *this* could happen that fast.

Oh, what is Girls & Monsters, you ask? It’s a collection of 5 novelettes about, well, girls and monsters. It’s dark, gloomy, aimed at the young-adult/new-adult gap, it’s scary and funny and I’m in love with each of my characters and their monsters – because don’t be fooled, we all have one waiting in the dark…

Happy Goth dance♥

41 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in All about me, myself and I, Good Book, Highly recommended, Little Obsession, Short Fiction, YA

February 25, 2012

Hiatus

By Anne Michaud

I’m alive, but writing about the dead.

Robert Smith, Pornography written all over him

I’m obsessed with my new project about two brothers looking for their missing father in the north, filled with wild snow and vengeful ghosts. So I’m trapped  until I put an end to Hunter’s Trap.

Meanwhile, here’s some eye candy. That Mary Poole is one lucky lady♥

6 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in All about me, myself and I, Little Obsession, YA

December 1, 2011

The City of Hell bugs are on the loose!

By Anne Michaud

The day has come: the horror anthology City of Hell has launched, and everyone can finally be scared out of their wits. I’ve never been part of a project getting so many good reviews before, so I’ll just say this – buy it.

Paperback

Kindle

I didn’t feel like posting a Fridayflash this week, instead here are the very first words that will appear in Wild Swan. Not a prologue per se, more like a poetic warning about the book. Ready? Go!

Fire, Let It Burn

Fire, See How It Feels

Forthcoming Fire

You like? Me too. It’s totally copyrighted, so don’t even try.

13 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in All about me, myself and I, Good Book, Highly recommended, YA