Blog Tour: Girl on the Brink by Christina Hoag





Girl on the Brink
by Christina Hoag
Genre: YA Romance/Thriller
Release date: August 30th 2016
Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books

Summary:
Sometimes the one you love isn’t the one you’re meant to be with.
The summer before senior year, Chloe starts an internship as a reporter at a local newspaper. While on assignment, she meets Kieran, a quirky aspiring actor. Chloe becomes smitten with Kieran’s charisma and his ability to soothe her soul, torn over her parents’ impending divorce. But as their bond deepens, Kieran becomes smothering and flies into terrifying rages. He confides in Chloe that he suffered a traumatic childhood, and Chloe is moved to help him. If only he could be healed, she thinks, their relationship would be perfect. But her efforts backfire, and Kieran turns violent. Chloe breaks up with him, but Kieran pursues her relentlessly to make up. Chloe must make the heartrending choice between saving herself or saving Kieran, until Kieran’s mission of remorse turns into a quest for revenge.


Advance Praise:
“An engrossing tale of a dangerous teen romance.” -- Kirkus Reviews
“Girl on the Brink is a must have for every high school and public library.” – Isabelle Kane, Wisconsin high school librarian 


About Teen Dating Violence
Abusive relationships are widespread, cutting across socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, religious and gender preference lines. One in three high school girls experience dating violence, while more than half of college-aged women reported experiencing controlling behavior in a relationship. Eighty-nine percent of female college students said they were unable to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship, and a third of teens involved in intimate partner violence ever told anyone about it. 

For more information, see http://www.breakthecycle.org/dating-violence-research.


The Author:

Christina Hoag is the author of Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults (Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books, August 2016) and Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld (Martin Brown Publishing, September 2016). She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention (Turner Publishing, 2014). She resides in Los Angeles. For more information, see www.christinahoag.com. 


Writing Tips
By Christina Hoag
Here are several writing tips I’ve discovered through many years of writing. You may find them helpful. They’re in no particular order.
1. I don’t write myself out every day. I leave something – the very next scene, usually - so when I come back the next day I know what to do. I just pick up and keep going. If you write yourself out, then you end up wasting a lot of time wondering what comes next and trying to get back into the rhythm of the story.
2. If someone says something in your piece doesn’t work, it’s only one person’s opinion. But if two people make the same observation, you need to pay attention to what they’re saying. More often than not, it’s something that needs fixing.
3. Develop a thick skin. It takes courage to write and show your work to the world for judgment, but remember that not everyone is going to like your work, and that’s okay. You have to learn to let criticism roll off you. The nastiest rejection I ever got was from the editor of a literary journal who scornfully said of my experimental fiction submission, “Why would anyone even read this?” I kept submitting it and got the piece and another like it published in other journals.
4. If there’s someone in your life who does not support you creatively, either get rid of them out or distance yourself from them as much as possible. Be ruthless because your art is worth it. I’ve broken up with boyfriends because they were not supportive or had no interest in my writing. In my mind, you can’t be with a writer if you’re not interested in what they write because their writing is part of their self-expression. 
5. Don’t give up! It can be hard to keep going amid the onslaught of rejection –agents, editors, reviewers. If you get a particularly bad rejection or setback, allow yourself to wallow in self-pity for a set period of time, say three days. When that’s over, get back to your PC.
6. When critiquing other people’s work, remember to be constructive and how it feels to be on the receiving end. Always state some positive points first then say ‘I thought you could improve this by…”  
7. Have a general sense of where your story is going and how it will end. I’ve tried “pantsing,” ie. writing by the seat of my pants, and ended up lost in the plot labyrinth and wasting a lot of time. So now I have a loose outline and I periodically map out the next couple scenes as I go, that keeps me on track and thinking ahead. It makes the process much smoother.
8. Read a wide range of genres and authors. Read poetry to develop lyricism and an ear for language. Read plays to develop dialogue. Read mysteries/thriller classics to improve plot development. Read literary works to enhance character development.
9. When confronting the dreaded writer’s block, do something else for a while, don’t fret and don’t force. I’ve found that getting up and going to the kitchen clears my head enough for the next step to pop in it. You can also use the time to do something else writing-related: work on your website, submissions, an essay, or on another section of your book. The secret is changing your focus so you can clear your blocked channel.
10. This may be the most important tip of all: Believe in yourself. Believe that you have something worthwhile to say. Believe in your talent. Believe that you will succeed and that the rocky road is part of any artist’s journey. 

Giveaway:
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Blog Tour Organized by:
YA Bound Book Tours


Review: First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson #1) by Darynda Jones



Author: Darynda Jones
11357769
Publisher: Piatkus Books
Publication Date: November 3rd 2011
Source: ebook (bought)
Rate:



Summary:

Private investigator Charlotte Davidson was born with three things: looks; a healthy respect for the male anatomy; and the rather odd job title of grim reaper. Since the age of five, she has been helping the departed solve the mysteries of their deaths so they can cross over. Thus, when three lawyers from the same law firm are murdered, they come to her to find their killer.
In the meantime, Charley's dealing with a being more powerful - and definitely sexier - than any spectre she's ever come across before. With the help of a pain-in-the-ass skip tracer, a dead pubescent gangbanger named Angel, and a lifetime supply of sarcasm, Charley sets out to solve the highest profile case of the year and discovers that dodging bullets isn't nearly as dangerous as falling in love. 

The Reader Diaries #7 : The Book That Started It All


One thing on which all readers might agree is that we have that book/s that started our "compulsive reading disorder" as I sometimes refer to the fact that reading has become a major part of my life and that I can't stay longer than two days away from my beloved books. Not that reading a lot is a disorder, I think that it's something that is quite essential for any human being, it helps us to be more knowledgeable and cultured in various subjects, I only like to joke around the fact that I read crazy amounts of books. I read so much that some of my friends think I'm actually an alien.
When I was little, like in second grade, I loathed reading and everything that had anything to do with it. Usually, when someone asked me to read something I screamed and shouted and cried until they let me go and made someone else do it.
But one magnificent day my aunt put in her head that she had to buy me a book and make me read it and so she picked me up and took me to a Bertrand (a Portuguese bookstore chain) and after trying to advise me some books and, seeing that it wasn't worth it, she just picked up this special pink book and put it in my hands (while I made disgusted faces).
And that book was:
3779

Joined together in an extraordinarily close relationship, Walt Disney World and Orlando, Florida, have become the world's most popular tourist destination. This title traces the history of the ups and downs of this marriage and tells the inside story of Disney's use and abuse of unparalleled governmental powers. The tale raises important questions about cities and the economic development choices they confront.
The different thing about this book was that it actually had  age appropriate content (as in it was interesting for my age at the time, not something about bumblebees, that got old really fast for me) and it had some pictures, like old book kind of pictures but they were still pretty and still made the book seem less stuffy and heavy.
From there I started picking up book after book until I got to what I read today. I really think this is an amazing book for all those little girls who are just starting to read.