Mundie Moms

Monday, October 14, 2013

Time Between Us and Time After Time by Tamara Ireland Stone, Two books, One story; Blog Tour

Today I'm thrilled to be apart of a The Time Between Us & Time After Time Blog Tour.  For today's stop, I have not one, but two excerpts to share with you. One excerpt is from Time Between Us and the other is from Time After Time.



Excerpt: Lafayette Park Scene

Both books open in a park in San Francisco. In this scene, Anna is visiting the park for the first time.


Time Between UsLafayette Park from 32-year-old Anna’s point of view.


October 2011
San Francisco, California

Even from this distance I can see how young he looks. Younger than the first time I saw him.
He and his friends have been skating around Lafayette Park for the last couple of hours, and now they’re sprawled across the grass, downing Gatorades and passing around a bag of Doritos.
“Excuse me.”
Eight sixteen-year-old heads spin in my direction, looking confused, then curious.
“Are you Bennett?” I ask and wait for him to nod, even though I’m sure it’s him. I’d know him anywhere. “Can I speak with you for a moment? In private?”
He knits his eyebrows together, but then he stands up and flips his skateboard over to keep it from rolling down the hill. I catch him looking back at his friends and shrugging as he follows me to the closest bench. He sits at the opposite end, as far away from me as possible.
Everything about him is so similar, so familiar, that I almost scoot over to close the distance, like I would have done so naturally when I was younger. But sixteen years have come between us, and that’s enough to keep me on my side of the bench.
“Hi.” My voice shakes, and I twist a curly strand of hair around my finger before catching myself and returning my hand to my sides, pressing both palms into the wooden slats.
“Ummm… Hi?” he says. He studies me through the uncomfortable silence. “I’m sorry, am I supposed to know you or something?”
My instinct is to say yes, but I stop myself, press my lips together, and shake my head instead. He doesn’t know me. Not yet. “I’m Anna. Here.”
I reach into my bag, pull out the sealed white envelope, and smile as I hold it out to him.
He takes the letter and turns it over a few times.
“I thought it would be safer to explain in writing.” My next words are the most important. After all my practice, I should have this part perfected, but I think through each word in my head again, just to be sure. “It’s too easy for me to say the wrong thing today, and if I do, we may never meet at all.”
=
Time After TimeBennett’s point of view
Here’s a different day in the same park, this time from Bennett’s point of view.

August 2012
San Francisco, California

Sam stands up too, and steps hard on the end of his board so it flips into his hand. “Look, you’ve managed to avoid her all summer, but when school starts next week, you won’t have a choice. The way I see it, there is only one reason you wouldn’t ask Megan out.”
“Because she’s kind of… vacuous?” She’s a junior, a year younger than all of us, and I haven’t spoken to her long enough to know if this is true or not. But I feel compelled to steer Sam away from his “one reason.”
He looks back at me. “If you really don’t like her, I get it. But she’s Lindsey’s friend, you know? The four of us could go out sometime. It might be fun.”
My mind flashes on an image of Anna, Emma, Justin, and me, walking into a movie theater, my arm draped over Anna’s shoulder and Emma’s arm threaded through Justin’s. I already have a “four of us.” Or at least, I did.
I run my hand through my hair. “I’ll think about it, okay?” I won’t, but hopefully I put enough sincerity in my voice to make him think I will.
“Don’t think about it. Just ask her out. Because, seriously, she’s nice and really cool and, in my humble opinion, not at all vacuous. And Lindsey likes her,” he adds, knowing that could be a selling point.
The rest of the guys come back to grab their stuff and I’m relieved. They mutter good-byes and start down the path that leads to the bottom of the hill. Sam follows them, but then stops and looks back at me.
“You coming?”
“I’m going to grab a coffee,” I say, gesturing toward the Fillmore Street shops in the opposite direction.
He gives me a quick “See ya” and takes off with everyone else as I head the other way.
When they’re out of sight, I double back to the bench overlooking the bay and watch the sailboats skim across the water.
Nothing’s changed, but everything’s different now. Because Anna sat here once, right next to me, and handed me a letter that told me I’d meet her someday. I wish she’d warned me that once I had, I wouldn’t quite know how to be here without her.

***************

I can't wait to go pick up a copy of Time After Time. 

ABOUT THE BOOKS



Anna and Bennett were never supposed to meet: she lives in 1995 Chicago and he lives in 2012 San Francisco. But Bennett’s unique ability to travel through time and space brings him into Anna’s life, and with him, a new world of adventure and possibility.
As their relationship deepens, they face the reality that time might knock Bennett back where he belongs, even as a devastating crisis throws everything they believe into question. Against a ticking clock, Anna and Bennett are forced to ask themselves how far they can push the bounds of fate—and what consequences they can bear in order to stay together.
Fresh, exciting, and deeply romantic, Time Between Us is a stunning and spellbinding debut from an extraordinary new talent in YA fiction.
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Calling Anna and Bennett’s romance long distance is an understatement: she’s from 1995 Chicago and he’s a time traveler from 2012 San Francisco. The two of them never should have met, but they did. They fell in love, even though they knew they shouldn’t. And they found a way to stay together, against all odds.
It’s not a perfect arrangement, though, with Bennett unable to stay in the past for more than brief visits, skipping out on big chunks of his present in order to be with Anna in hers. They each are confident that they’ll find a way to make things work…until Bennett witnesses a single event he never should have seen (and certainly never expected to). Will the decisions he makes from that point on cement a future he doesn’t want?
Told from Bennett’s point of view, Time After Time will satisfy readers looking for a fresh, exciting, and beautifully-written love story, both those who are eager to find out what’s next for Time Between Us’s Anna and Bennett and those discovering their story for the first time.

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To find out more about Tamara's book, visit her website here

The Giveaway:
I've got a copy of each book to give to one 1 lucky winner!!! To enter, just leave me a comment along with your email address. (US residents only, you must be 13 yrs & older to enter). 

Check out the other stops in the tour:
BookHounds (10/11):  http://maryinhb.blogspot.com 
Reading Teen (10/12) http://www.readingteen.net
Jenuine Cupcakes (10/13)  http://jenuinecupcakes.blogspot.com
Good Choice Reading (10/16) http://www.goodchoicereading.com 


Cassandra Clare on Jace


Cassie on Jace:

Hi Cassie, I just had to write a short note to tell you that I love your books and can’t wait for COHF! I’ve passed the books on to my 67 year old dad who also loves them:) ( though for some reason that I don’t understand he hates Jace!) Thanks for hours of entertainment :) All the best, Briona. — breeza80
Dads hate Jace. He is exactly the guy they do not want their teenage daughter dating. Jace has good manners, when he chooses to use them, but often (especially early on) he does not choose to use them. Dads are like “This guy will try to get my teenage daughter on a motorcycle,” plus the whole thing where he introduces her to a world of danger and excitement and she becomes someone who never comes home from curfew. Also they assume she will try to get into Jace’s pants, which is very upsetting from a parental viewpoint.
I learned these things from my own father, who also dislikes Jace. My father believes all literature and stories are divided into “good daughter stories” and “bad daughter stories.” For instance, His Dark Materials is a bad daughter story. (My dad also thinks that the more dogs there are in a painting, the better the painting is.)
Recently, my dad wrote me this letter:
"Dear Cassie: Thank you for the Space Commander piggy bank. I have pennies all over the place and now I have a cool thing to put them into. What a great daughter.
By contrast, Kate and I are watching DVDs of 24. We started season 2 and now are working on season 1. It is a wonderful bad daughter story. Jack Bauer’s bad daughter Kim is always being kidnapped, sometimes more than once in an episode! What a great story.”
This probably explains something about me, and why even though in actual life I am attracted to kindly dark-haired boys in glasses, I choose to write about characters like Jace. You never get too old to want to annoy your parents.

LOL I love Cassie's response. This is a topic Sophie & I have talked about quite a bit. While we both love Jace, there is no way in Idris would we allow our daughters to date someone like him, and it's for many of the reasons Cassie listed above.

Cassandra Clare Set to Finish Writing City of Heavenly Fire Today!

Cassie tweeted this morning that YES she is scheduled to FINISH WRITING CITY OF HEAVENLY FIRE TODAY!!!! I know, we're all incredibly excited about this. Here's her tweet:



Now we can all sit back, and anxiously await for the Spring of 2014 to hurry up and get here so we can find out what happens in this book. 

From Gods by Mary Ting, Blog Tour (Teaser & Giveaway)


Welcome to today's From Gods blog tour, for Crossroads author Mary Ting's newest release. Check out today's teaser, find out more about the book and enter to win!

Teaser #4



“You’re wet. You should take off your clothes.”
What a way to avoid a question! Skylar blinked her eyes in disbelief. Did she hear him correctly? “Excuse me?” Not wanting to assume he was really asking her to strip off her clothes, she didn’t move a muscle, but the way his piercing eyes laid on her, she might as well have already been naked. Then she inwardly gasped when he started to unbutton his shirt. Her eyes shot to the floor, then back to him, and then to the floor, wondering what she was supposed to do in this awkward moment.
“Here. Go change in the restroom. You don’t want to catch a cold.” He placed his shirt in front of her.
She looked up to see him shirtless for the very first time. With all the right curves and tightness, he looked like a statue of a god. He was beautiful and perfectly toned, with satin-like skin, which looked like it would be smooth to the touch. And there was a small tattoo shaped like a lightning bolt on his upper right arm, toward his shoulder. Way too sexy!
As warmth flushed her face, she tried not to stare, but there was no way around it. “Umm…you won’t have a shirt,” Skylar said, thinking that was the most idiotic thing she had said so far, but she couldn’t think when he was half-naked in front of her.
“I’m not cold, but you will be.”
Mason was right. Skylar didn’t realize she was shivering until she placed her hand out to take his shirt. The adrenaline from the initial shock had kept her warm, and now it was wearing away. The blasting air conditioner didn’t help either. “Thanks.”
Just as she pivoted right toward the restroom, even though she was deathly scared to go back, Mason gripped her arm. “Wait. Don’t go in there without me.”
His sudden protectiveness surprised Skylar, but then again, he had saved her.

About the Book



Did you just see a flash of lightning across the sky on a clear sunny day? It’s not from Mother Nature. It is most likely from Mason Grand, swoon-worthy demigod, one of Zeus’s descendants.


Skylar Rome is supposed to be having the best summer ever before she heads off to college.  Little did she know, her whole life was about to change while visiting her cousin. Nearly drowning at the beach due to unknown forces, one of the Grand brothers she’d just met, Mason, saves her life. Cool, collected, mysterious, and dangerously good-looking, Skylar is drawn to him from the start. Though she knows he is the type of guy good girls stayed away from, it seems he is always saving her life, and the attraction was inevitable.

Upon meeting the brothers, strange things begin to happen. When she accidentally kills one of the brothers, it throws her life into turmoil, as they search to find the answers. Implausibly, she gets caught up in a world of the descendants of ancient gods, all who have super powers. Not only is her discovery difficult to accept, evil beings are after her. Running out of time and running for her life, she must unravel a mystery. What do they want from her? Forced into a battle set into motion long before she was born, will she find the answers, or will she die trying?

 

About The Author



Mary Ting resides in Southern California with her husband and two children. She enjoys oil painting and making jewelry. Writing her first novel, Crossroads Saga, happened by chance. It was a way to grieve the death of her beloved grandmother, and inspired by a dream she once had as a young girl. When she started reading new adult novels, she fell in love with the genre. It was the reason she had to write one-Something Great. Why the pen name, M Clarke? She tours with Magic Johnson Foundation to promote literacy and her children's chapter book-No Bullies Allowed.

Follow Mary via: Facebook | Twitter | Website | Blog |  Goodreads
Find her M Clarke accounts here & here

The Giveaway
Enter to win a signed copy of From Gods & a lightening bracelet! To enter, please fill out the form below:

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Shadowhunters' Codex Teasers

Shadowhunters, if you're not already following Simon Teen on Instgram, Tumblr and Twitter, then you're missing out on the recent The Shadowhunters' Codex teasers they keep posting. In case you've missed them, here's what they've recently posted (in order of the their most recent post):








 Read Cassie's most recent post talking about The Shadowhunters' Codex here & get a look inside the book here.

Mundane Monday #194: Will & Tessa


Happy Mundane Monday! Enjoy a little Will & Tessa


"He tasted like snowflakes and wine, like winter and Will and London." 

*sigh* I really need to go re-read this series again. I lost count of how many times I've already read it. I feel you can't over do re-reading The Infernal Devices.

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