VBT# 13 On Halloween AND Winnemucca - Laura Elliott + WIN A COPY OF BOTH BOOKS :)

Today's Book Spolight I was asked to do to celebrate Halloween and since It's October the 13th I thought I would add this cute picture of a Witch reading a book :). Today's author is one that I have toured on my site before - Laura Elliott and today we are spotlighting her novels "13 On Halloween" and "Winnemucca". She has also written for us a Guest Post to get us into the Halloween Mood :).

Up For Grabs also , is a copy of Both her novels "13 On Halloween" and "Winnemucca" - Open Internationally and all you have to do is leave your name and email address is the comments field.

Synopsis: 13 On Halloween - Laura Elliott

Twelve-year-old Roxie wants to be like Adrianne, the popular girl, the peacock, who gets everything she wants––a trampoline, a flock to prowl around the mall with, and most especially invitations to parties. But everything changes when Roxie invites all the popular kids in the eighth grade to her thirteenth birthday party on Halloween and they all come. And a boy, the boy, actually talks to Roxie. Roxie has the best night of her life until the peacocks decide they want to celebrate her birthday in a way Roxie never expects––in her attic, with a pact to never tell a living soul what happens there.
BONUS MATERIAL: A Sneak Peek of TRANSFER STUDENT, a YA freaky-Friday story about how a geek, alien boy and a Beverly Hills surfer, fashionista survive each others' lives only to fall in love with each other, a galaxy apart.

Here's the trailer: http://laurasmagicday.wordpress.com/13-on-halloween-trailer/

Here's the excerpt: http://laurasmagicday.wordpress.com/13-on-halloween-excerpt/

Synopsis: Winnemucca - Laura Elliott - 2011

When fear’s as blind as love, how far would you go to find your own happily ever after? One mistake will change Ginny’s life forever. One answer will set her free. Once upon a time Ginny’s road blood ripened, the day she got wise to love. Engaged to the high school quarterback, his quarter-carat ring and enchanting smile should have been enough for her. But, she stands him up and takes a walk where every step questions her happily ever after gone-bad and the fate of the mother she never knew. The mother her father refuses to talk about. Ginny fights to untangle her big, fat, lie-of-a-life on an enchanted road trip to Winnemucca, where she believes all her answers lie. To solve the riddle of her past, she must outrun everyone who wants a piece of her future–including a man determined to see she never has one.

Here's the trailer: http://laurasmagicday.wordpress.com/winnemucca-trailer/

Here's the excerpt: http://laurasmagicday.wordpress.com/excerpts/

From The Desk of Laura Elliott :

My friends made me write 13 on Halloween. They always laugh at me when I say “I hamster,” or, “I gopher.” They said I should write the way I talk. I sort of rolled my eyes. But then it dawned on me, teenagers have their own languages too. So I decided to explore a character who uses animals as verbs, as I do, and looks at the world through a Wild Kingdom prism in order to understand her changing world and her role in it. I wanted the book to be funny. I mean, how serious could a book that uses animals as verbs be? And yet, while I hope readers get a good laugh, I hope they might also get a lump in their throat from time to time as they discover powerful insights along with Roxie, the twelve-turning-thirteen-on-Halloween main character.

I write magical realism. I do so because of my father’s experiences as a POW in World War II. He created opportunity and industry where most only saw despair. It was his perception of a horrible reality that saved him. Only when he began to share some stories about his experiences in the war, did I realize that the magic in the world lies in the ambiguity, and some time murky seas, of perception. This is what I like to explore in my fiction.

I also love when my characters’ dreams come true in hilariously scary ways. In Roxie’s case, this means that she’ll visit a shadow world. In my debut novel Winnemucca, it means that Ginny, a seventeen-year-old small-town girl, finally listens to her own intuition only because her talkative, always questioning feet won’t shut up. Those questions begin Ginny’s enchanted road trip to her true calling, her true family and her true love.

There’s a quote in my novel Winnemucca that explains how I feel about magic:

“I scooped up the dirt with my handcuffed hands knowing things that don’t have any power over us do sometimes, if you believe in them. Maybe that was the only kind of magic I’d ever find in the wide world.”

Thank you for hosting me today, Paula.

If you will be in the Pacific Northwest, I’m on The Rain Boots Required Young Adult Book Tour http://www.facebook.com/RainBootsRequired  please join us! Or, if you are in Savannah, GA for Halloween Weekend, I’d love to celebrate with you and some other amazing YA authors here http://www.theplumessociety.com/  

Follow your own magic,Laura

http://www.authorlaura.com/

Laurasmagicday.wordpress.com

Competition Time:

Open To All

Just Leave your name and email address in the comments field to win your very own copies of 13 On Halloween and Winnemucca.

Please Note : If you are from US/CANADA - You will recieve a Print Copy

Anywhere Else in the World - You will recieve an Ebook Copy.