March~Author of the Month

Hello everyone! It's another new month and with that comes a new Author of the Month. This will consist of a post that includes an interview with the chosen author, along with featuring them in my sidebar for that entire month.  New feature I started on my blog in September (Refer HERE if you would like to see the original post & if you would like to be apart of this as an author).

March's author is: Brenda Drake

~About the Author~

Brenda Drake grew up the youngest of three children, an Air Force brat, and the continual new kid at school. Her fondest memories growing up is of her eccentric, Irish grandmother's animated tales, which gave her a strong love for storytelling. So it was only fitting that she would choose to write stories with a bend toward the fantastical. When she's not writing or hanging out with her family, she haunts libraries, bookstores, and coffee shops, or reads someplace quiet and not at all exotic (much

to her disappointment). 

Get in touch with her on:

   

~Interview~

1.     What inspired you to become an author?

Brenda: Growing up, I always loved reading and telling stories. My Irish grandmother would tell me fantastical stories full of folklore and things she had made up. I could listen to them for hours. Soon, I started telling my own stories. So when I got married and was able to stay home with my kids, I took up writing again.

2.     Which authors do you look up to?

Brenda: I would have to say C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J. K. Rawlings. I love how they tell their stories. My first fantasy book was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was sucked into the story and wanted to live in magical worlds.  My favorite book is the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I had felt lonely most of my childhood, so I could relate to Mary in the story.

3.       When writing, is there something that you require in order to feel inspired?

Brenda: Coffee. I can’t start writing without it. A jolt of caffeine can really inspire the words to flow. I do get up many times when I get stuck and walk around to process my thoughts.

4.     If you could spend two years in a fictional book world, which book would you pick and why?

Brenda: I would spend it in the Harry Potter world (after Voldemort, naturally). It’s such an amazing world. Who wouldn’t want to spend two years there? I would go shopping in Diagon Alley, have tea with Mrs. Weasley, and open an account at Gringotts. Oh wait, I could just fly to Orlando, Florida and visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. But it could get pricey staying there for two years.

5.     Between the Touching Fate and Thief of Lies, which did you enjoy writing the most?

Brenda: I would definitely say that I enjoyed writing Thief of Lies most. I’ve spent more time in the world and with the characters. When I finish the series, I may go into a deep depression. I will miss writing about the characters and the world of the Library Jumpers.

6.     Out of all your characters, who have been the most challenging and who has been the most exciting to write?

Brenda: The most challenging character I’ve written has to be Iris in Cursing Fate (Fated Series, Book 2). She is possessed by an evil spirit, so there’s two personalities taking up space in her head. The most exciting to write would have to be Bastien in Guardian of Secrets (Library Jumpers Book 2). He gets more scenes in the next books and it was fun bringing him in the mix more.

7.     In one sentence, how would you describe the Library Jumper’s series?

Brenda: A teenager's trip to a Boston library turns perilous when she discovers a gateway book linking the world's great libraries and a hidden world filled with magic and danger.

8.     What are two quotes from any of your book series that make you proud to say that you wrote them?

Brenda: I’m so bad at choosing my own quotes, but I will try.

“We each have an appointment with death. I’d rather die for a cause than die of old age never having done something important.” Thief of Lies (Library Jumpers, Book 1)

It used to be just a word without meaning. But now, it held a power beyond that of a simple definition in a dictionary. She had looked the word up. Fate was unavoidable. Something that couldn’t be measured. Yet she had the ability to shift it. She worried she didn’t have the maturity to know when to let sleeping fates lie. Touching Fate (Fated Series, Book 1)

~Brenda Drake's Books~

Title: Touching Fate

Series: The Fated Series

Author: Brenda Drake

Genre: Young Adult, YA Fantasy, Teen, YA Paranormal, YA Romance

Length: 194 pages

ISBN: 978-1-63375-404-1

Release Date: October 12, 2015

Imprint: Crave

One touch is all it takes…

Aster Layne believes in physics, not psychics. A tarot card reading on the Ocean City Boardwalk should have been a ridiculous, just-for-fun thing. It wasn’t. Aster discovers she has a very unscientific gift-with a simple touch of the cards, she can change a person’s fate.

Reese Van Buren is cursed. Like the kind of old-school, centuries-old curse that runs in royal families. Every firstborn son is doomed to die on his eighteenth birthday-and Reese’s is coming up fast. Bummer. He tries to distract himself from his inevitable death…only to find the one person who can save him.

Aster doesn’t know that the hot Dutch guy she’s just met needs her help-or that he’s about to die.

But worst of all…she doesn’t know that her new gift comes with dark, dark consequences that can harm everyone she loves.

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Title: Thief of Lies

Series: Library Jumpers, #1

Author: Brenda Drake


Genre: Young Adult

Length: 400 pages

Print ISBN: 978-1-63375-221-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63375-222-1

Release Date: January 2016

Imprint: Entangled Teen

Gia Kearns would rather fight with boys than kiss them. That is, until Arik, a leather clad hottie in the Boston Athenaeum, suddenly disappears. While examining the book of world libraries he abandoned, Gia unwittingly speaks the key that sucks her and her friends into a photograph and transports them into a Paris library, where Arik and his Sentinels—magical knights charged with protecting humans from the creatures traveling across the gateway books—rescue them from a demonic hound.

Jumping into some of the world’s most beautiful libraries would be a dream come true for Gia, if she weren’t busy resisting her heart or dodging an exiled wizard seeking revenge on both the Mystik and human worlds. Add a French flirt obsessed with Arik and a fling with a young wizard, and Gia must choose between her heart and her head, between Arik’s world and her own, before both are destroyed.

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