I'd like to thank Roxanne @ Bewitching Book Tours for giving me this opportunity to participate in the RIDE OF YOUR LIFE Blog Tour. And I'd like to welcome Shevi Arnold to ABTB!
Ride of Your Life
By Shevi Arnold
Genre: YA Romantic Paranormal
Publisher: CreateSpace
Seventeen-year-old Tracy Miller met the love of her life . . . thirty years after her own death.
Seventeen-year-old Tracy Miller met the love of her life . . . thirty years after her own death.
Tracy was working at the House of Horrors at the Amazing Lands Theme Park when the fire broke out. Instead of running, she lost her life trying to save eleven-year-old Mack. Now thirty years have passed, and suddenly everything changes with the arrival of two new ghosts: a little girl named Ashley and a cute seventeen-year-old boy named Josh. Josh would do anything for Tracy, but can he help her let go of the past and accept his love?
Ride of Your Life is a bittersweet, romantic, YA ghost story that was inspired by a true event: the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire, which killed eight teenagers in 1984. It is a fantasy novel about undying love, and it won third-place in Smart Writer’s Write It Now (W.I.N.) contest in the YA category, which was judged by Alex Flinn, the author of Beastly and Cloaked.
Hang on. Love can be as terrifying as a roller coaster, but it can also be the Ride of Your Life.
BUY LINKS:
BNNook AppleiBookstore
About this Author:
Shevi Arnold loves writing, illustrating, and making people laugh—and she’s been doing all three since 1987 when she started working as an editorial cartoonist for a newsweekly. She’s also worked as a comics magazine editor, as an arts-and-entertainment writer specializing in comedy and children’s entertainment, and as a consumer columnist.
Nowadays, though, she enjoys writing (and sometimes illustrating) humorous fiction, fantasy and science fiction, mostly for children and young adults. Shevi grew up in Philadelphia, and her family had a season pass to Great Adventure in the early 1980s. She was nineteen-years-old and studying overseas when a fellow college student asked her if she knew about the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire. Eight teenagers had lost their lives.
Like many, Shevi was shocked by the news. In her mind, she wanted to give that tragedy a happy ending. Ride of Your Life is the result. Her previous books are Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey--a humorous novel for middle graders about individualism and friendship overcoming peer pressure and bullying--and Toren the Teller's Tale--a YA fantasy about the magic of storytelling and one girl's struggle to accept that magic within herself. Why My Love Life Sucks, the first in the Gilbert the Fixer, is a funny YA science-fantasy novel about the ultimate geek having to confront his ultimate fear--getting stuck with a gorgeous girl who wants to be his platonic best friend literally forever.
CONTACT LINKS:
Websites: http://www.shevistories.com and http://www.sheviarnold.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/SheviStories
Google+: https://plus.google.com/111110645305858254999/posts
Short Excerpt:
People continued to rush through her, but Tracy ignored the flashing of the sunlight and shadows on her closed eyelids, ignored the screams and the panic. She let her consciousness slip away from the scene, let it blur until it faded into nothingness.
She was in the ghost world now. Here everything was silent and still, and nothing real could touch her. Although there was nothing to see, Tracy kept her eyes shut. The darkness was comforting, like a soft blanket on a cool night.
The only illusion she held onto was her body. Letting go of that was difficult, like stepping off a high diving board when she couldn’t see the water below, like riding on a roller coaster with nothing under her feet. It was a freefall into the unknown. Her body was what she knew, even if it was no longer real. It was familiar, and it felt safe. Everything around her was quiet and peaceful and still. She was alone in her world. Completely alone.
Then Tracy felt something hit her in the chest, and she returned to the Amazing Lands Theme Park with a scream.
Guest Post by Shevi Arnold:
Marketing experts today recommend that writers try to picture their ideal readers. I think I might try to picture you. It’s interesting how much we seem to have in common, Christina.
I love your header and the way you describe yourself. My favorite book when I was a teenager was The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, and it still holds a special place in my heart. The unicorn in your header is magical, sweet, and somewhat whimsical, just like the book, and I love it.
You say, “I like stories that you know are impossible, but wish were real anyway.” It’s funny, because recently I took a step back to look at my novels in an effort to figure out what they have in common. One is a contemporary, humorous novel for kids; one is a fantasy epic about the magic of storytelling; and one is a romance about teenage ghosts falling in love in an amusement park. I realized that they all deal with the question of what is real.
Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey is about a boy who likes to believe everything he reads, from Harry Potter to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Toren the Teller’s Tale is about the magic of stories, which according to the Many Worlds theory is real. The worlds of our stories do exist somewhere in our infinite universe. It just takes a storyteller as magical as Toren to take us there. And Ride of Your Life takes place in a ghost world where what you believe—for good or bad—is your reality. For some ghosts, the amusement park in the story is heaven, for others it’s hell. It all depends on what they believe to be real.
Here I’ve written three very different novels, but it turns out they all deal with a similar theme. One of the best reviews I received for Toren the Teller’s Tale said that after reading it “you will definitely believe that Magic is real.” You will, because it is. It’s just that Magic isn’t what you think it is. It’s not a spell Harry Potter chants as he waves a magic wand. It’s the spell J.K. Rowling casts over her readers. The real magic is in the stories. It’s the magic that sweeps you away to amazing places and makes you feel deeply for people you couldn’t meet any other way.
Thank you, Christina, for hosting me on my blog tour. And thanks to you and all my ideal readers.
You have no idea what magic you hold.
Sorry for the delay. I accidentally thought I had sent it to you. You should have it by now. I sent it to blissfulreadingforever@gmail.com this morning.
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting up my guest post. I hope you have a wonderful summer, Christina!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous!
ReplyDelete