Mundie Moms

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Survivors: Point of Origin Blog Tour: Author Interview & Giveaway



I'm thrilled to be kicking off Amanda Havard's The Survivors: Point of Origin blog tour. I had the privilege of meeting Amanda at ALA-Midwinter and I have to say, she's fabulous! If you ever get the chance to meet her, I highly recommend doing so. I'm even more excited to have her on the blog today! Along with Amanda's guest post, I'm giving away a signed copy of both of her books, along with an iPod nano fully loaded with both of her playlists!




Should you find yourself on my Facebook fan page and wonder about my personal interests, this is the list you’d find:


Other than writing? Alternate forms of storytelling. Music, music, music. Reading. Style and the world of fashion. Pilates. Cars. Cooking. Obscure mythology. Comic book heroes. The back table at Fido. Nashville, Tennessee. Edgy European luxe magazines. Abstract or pop-art interpretations of red roses (a la Valentino). Moleskine notebooks. Talking. Listening. Technology. Rule-breaking. Sunglasses. Thai food. Runway photographs. Oaxaca and the odd beauty of El Dia de los Muertos. The Pacific Ocean (more specifically, the Monterey Bay). Red lipstick. Buying more books than I have time to read. Theories of education and human development. People-watching. Blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

Blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Or as someone recently put it in an article they wrote about me, somewhere between reality and fiction. That one gets me. I don’t totally recall when I wrote that as I am sure it was somewhere in the madness of revising a book and getting it ready to share with the world — also known as giving a sizeable slice of your heart away — but I guess I love the honesty. Those are all the things that interest me most in the world, and if you’ve read either of the Survivors books, then you know those are things that interest my characters too. (Okay, maybe nobody does Pilates, but other than that.) The places I love are the places they live. The powers they have are the ones I found most interesting in comic books and supernatural stories growing up. Their signatures are things I’d notice on someone. We share a common bond.


It’s not that I can’t write characters whose lives are so different from my own or whose interests are so opposite mine so much as it is that I choose not to. At some point not too long ago, something must have switched on in my brain. I was likely asleep at the time — or should have been — but there came a point when I started letting the fringes of my own reality give way to the fiction that lives in my brain. It is the best choice I have ever made.


In 2009, when I wrote The Survivors in an infamous 27-days-while-in-grad-school, Sadie took hold of my soul. I’m not sure if it’s when I decided to put her in a wedding in Tupelo that I, myself, had just been in or perhaps when I decided to give her a Twitter account — and started using it — that I let go and became her, but somewhere in that summer, it happened. And after her, it was every other character. Their obsessions and guilty pleasures, their bullheadedness and their charm, their fashion and footwear, it all became a part of my life. Now it’s not to say I never liked Audi R8s or Burberry Prorsum leather jackets before, but since Mark did I loved them like they were a part of me. Like I had reason to. And it’s not to say that I wasn’t highly interested in obscure and obvious mythology alike before Sadie, but since she had a need to know more, suddenly I did too. My stories and my self have merged into one being. And ever since we produced an interactive story app of The Survivors, even my means of storytelling and my self have merged. We are one inseparable piece now, the story and I, and so you take us all or nothing.

It is no wonder that I now do the talking as six Survivors characters on Twitter, and have for years. I am, they are… one in the same.

Years ago, I read a Sylvia Plath quote that went like this, “I write because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” This couldn’t be truer of me. I don’t want to write; I have to. I don’t hope to tell stories; they tell themselves in my mind. I’m one of those writers who lives and breathes it, whose story doesn’t ever leave her mind. I have decided to live fully invested in a world that is similar to my own but isn’t. I am not afraid of embracing the way the world brings me the story, and I am always grateful. 

I don’t think what I’m doing is particularly special or even unique. No, instead, I can just tell I’m someone who’s let go and is unafraid of what madness my mind might conjure. I am simply someone who likes to live in the fantasy space between my life and the ones I create. I pay attention to the world around me, let my everyday interests influence my writing and my writing influence my everyday interests. And when I stop and wonder about something, I wonder about it through the lens of every fictional character rolling around in my head. And why wouldn’t I? I want to be them, don’t I? How else would I tell a story in their voices?

There’s a bit of madness living this way, but I hope it shows in my stories in the best way imaginable. This is my life now. The life of a storyteller.

I’ll leave you with one more now, a quote from the tragically talented Alexander McQueen that has become something of a mantra for me.


“There is no way back for me now. I am going to take you

on journeys you’ve never dreamed were possible.”





THE SURVIVORS (Book 1) Synopsis:
In 1692, when witch trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead. Fourteen of them survived.
The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family’s sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back.
On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she’s sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality. After all…
How do you kill a Survivor?
The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie’s life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you’ll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself.
And it is only the beginning...

POINT OF ORIGIN Synopsis:
The winter is upon us. The Survivors are in chaos. The war is coming. One year ago, Sadie Matthau was living among humans, existing as one of them. But now she wakes each morning in a house in the Survivors City, listening to the invocations and insults of her family members as they cope with their new future. A war. Rogue abandoners turned monsters. Sadie and the icy Winters living in their midst, bringing the outside world in. The Survivors: Point of Origin is Sadie's quest to save her family. But can she find what she is looking for when she can barely stomach the Winters wintry demeanor and finds herself distracted by Cole Hardwick's warm heart? Will she be able to uncover her family's history even as the elders grip tightens around her throat? In an action packed ride full of magic and misery, terror and triumph, Sadie Matthau seeks the Survivors beginning just in time to face her end.

Immersedition: 
Chafie Creative released the Immersedition, a revolutionary app for Fiction, in which THE SURVIVOR SERIES by Amanda Havard was the pilot edition. More than a regular or even enhanced eBook, the Immersedition was crafted specifically to embrace the possibilities of interactivity inside a novel. You can see more about the Immersedition HERE.
Amanda and Music:
Not only a brilliant writer, Amanda Havard is a musician and songwriter and has written several original songs which are on each book's soundtrack. You can see the videos of three of the songs HERE.

Author Bio:
Amanda Havard has been telling stories since before she could write. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, where her first book was published in her elementary school library at age 7. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Vanderbilt University. She currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her baby grand piano and more story ideas than she could tell in one lifetime.
Links:
Amanda's Website: Http://amandahavard.com
Follow Amanda on Twitter: @AmandaHavard
Follow Amanda on Facebook: Amanda Havard
Follow THE SURVIVOR SERIES on Facebook: The Survivors
The Giveaway:

Thank you to Amanda, I have a signed copy of both of Amanda's books I'm giving away, The Survivors and Point of Origin, along with an iPod Nano fully loaded with the soundtracks from books 1 & 2. 

To enter, please fill out the form below.
- 1 entry per person
- US & Canadian residents only
- Must be 13 yrs & older to enter (under are required to have a parent/guardian's permission)
- This giveaway will end on June 19th, 2012

7 comments:

  1. Awesome post ladies!!! I'm really looking forward to my date!!! Super stoked to start Point of Origin too :D

    Anna @ Literary Exploration

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  2. Why US and UK only D: damn...

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    1. Publishers can only ship out to the country they're in and sometimes to the neighboring country. Hopefully Amanda's books will be picked up over seas soon ;)

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  3. It sounds really good! Thanks for the chance to win!

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  4. I have been touring around the site today catching up on missed posts and you have made me smile over and over. I have not heard much about this series and I am definitely now sold. Thank you for you awesome sharing.

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