Promo Monday: HAUNTING VIOLET by Alyxandra Harvey

Title: Haunting Violet

Author: Alyxandra Harvey

Publisher: Walker Children’s (June 21, 2011)

To Purchase: Amazon  

Description: Violet Willoughby doesn't believe in ghosts. But they believe in her. After spending years participating in her mother's elaborate ruse as a fraudulent medium, Violet is about as skeptical as they come in all matters supernatural. Now that she is being visited by a very persistent ghost, one who suffered a violent death, Violet can no longer ignore her unique ability. She must figure out what this ghost is trying to communicate, and quickly because the killer is still on the loose.

Afraid of ruining her chance to escape her mother's scheming through an advantageous marriage, Violet must keep her ability secret. The only person who can help her is Colin, a friend she's known since childhood, and whom she has grown to love. He understands the true Violet, but helping her on this path means they might never be together. Can Violet find a way to help this ghost without ruining her own chance at a future free of lies?

 

About the Author: Alyxandra Harvey lives in a stone Victorian house in Ontario, Canada with a few resident ghosts who are allowed to stay as long as they keep company manners. She loves medieval dresses, used to be able to recite all of The Lady of Shalott by Tennyson, and has been accused, more than once, of being born in the wrong century. She believes this to be mostly true except for the fact that she really likes running water, women’s rights, and ice cream. 

 Among her favourite books are ‘The Wood Wife’ by Terri Windling, ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte, and of course, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen. Elizabeth Bennet is her hero because she’s smart and sassy, and Mr. Darcy is, well, yum.
Aside from the ghosts, she also lives with husband and their dogs. She likes cinnamon lattes, tattoos and books. Please visit her website here.

To read my review, click here.

Personal Thursday: Why I Write YA

I’m sure by now most everyone has read or heard about the WSJ’s article about the darkness in YA fiction. I’m not going to link you to the article, but it did make me question why I write YA fiction.

There wasn’t much YA fiction when I was a teenager. The Judy Blume books the article mentions, I read in elementary school. To me, they will always be children’s books. By 7^th and 8^th grade, I branched into Stephen King, Michael Crichton, and many, many murder mysteries.

I love the books I read when growing up, but I can’t say they were teen fiction. I learned about love from Shakespeare’s tragedies; it either ends in murder or suicide with a hearty scoop of madness. (Maybe that’s why I don’t date.) I read Heller’s Catch-22; the only thing I remember about it is the guy cut in half by the airplane propeller. I read really terrible things that I very much enjoyed. Things that prompted me to keep the lights on at night and cringe at my vanilla-coated world.

And I did grow up in what I call a “vanilla-coated” world. I was sheltered, so when bad things happened, I didn’t know how to process them. My self-defense mechanism was to ignore what happened. To forget. I got good at that. When my grandfather died at age 13, I didn’t cry. I internalized the pain and did my best to forget he ever existed. I did the same for my grandmother to the point my dad called me a “cold, heartless bitch.” I loathed my own emotions, so I acted like nothing bothered me.

I remember when the first time I saw Titanic and cried at the end. We were on a bus ride heading to Florida perhaps and my friend wished she had been awake to see my cry. She wanted to see my humanity. I guess when you don’t show emotions, people don’t think you have any. I just didn’t want to be viewed as weak, not that I thought other people were weak when they showed their emotions. No, that was just for me.

I internalized it to the point that it eventually leaked out in my early twenties in the forms of depression and high anxiety.

I don’t internalize things quite as much. Now I’ve been known to cry at commercials, I’m embarrassed to say. But I think YA could’ve helped me as a teen. In YA bad things happen, but it’s the process of how to overcome such things that’s wonderful.

I didn’t realize it until this article on why I wrote Virtuoso. It’s about grief and how Nadia overcomes it. A lot of my novels deal with death. Perhaps it is my own way to work out my own problems and help teens too.

Perhaps that’s why I love reading YA fiction today. I still need it.