Happy Thanksgiving! Cover Reveal :)

All right guys! It's the moment you've all been waiting for! Or at least... the moment I've been waiting for, which is probably a more accurate statement. Here's the cover for my newest LDS YA Fiction book "Finding June" which should come out sometime in mid December (Just in time for Christmas *hint* *hint*). The cover was designed by the very lovely and very talented Jackie Hicken who also writes some amazing fairytale books that you guys should get on her case about publishing.

Also, for those of you who don't know about my June series, here's a brief synopsis :)

Hope you enjoy the cover as much as your Thanksgiving turkey and football!


Standing up for what you believe in is hard for any teenager in the battleground known as high school. It's even harder in the world of Hollywood, which is where sixteen-year-old June Laurie dreams of being. Thanks to the constant training from her agent/grandmother and the support of her best friend Joseph, June is positive she's ready. But is an innocent little Mormon girl like June ever really ready to be cast as the love interest for the country's hottest star, Lukas Leighton? When June lands a role in Hollywood's most popular crime drama, Forensic Faculty, she finds herself caught off-guard by the fast-paced world of tabloids and paparazzi, and swept off her feet by her gorgeous co-star. Now June must decide what she's willing to give up to achieve the title of Hollywood starlet—or more importantly, what's too sacred to lose.

Tag, I'm It!- The Next Big Thing

I was tagged by author Cindy C. Bennett to discuss my WIP.
 
What is the working title of your book?
Sugar Coated (It's a trilogy along with "Rose Tinted" and "Silver Lined")

Where did the idea come from for the book?

A lot of different places actually. I was driving home from Idaho to Utah with The Husband one night and said "I love dystopian YA books. I wish I could write one." And he said, "Why don't you?" So the next three hours were spent with us throwing ideas around for a cool plot and by the end of the drive we'd come up with a trilogy! A lot has been added to the plot since then (Twists and turns!) but I'm just so excited to write a series where I can invent my own world with its own technology and social norms.

What genre does your book fall under?

Dystopian Young Adult Fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your charcters in a movie rendition?
Brynn would be played by Emily Browning since I modeled the character after her :) Eris would be played by Charlize Theron... she's good at being pretty and creepy all at once. Ty would be Xavier Samuel. Jonah would be played by Logan Lerman. And Amber and Bennett I wrote as my friends Amber and Whitney Bennett sooooo they could play themselves. 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A perfectly contained world doesn't always equal safety for Brynn, whose constant nightmares hint at an unsavory truth about her reality.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I'm shopping it around right now at a few agents but I may still self-publish it.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? May we see an intro?
It took about three or four months to write it. Working full time is a beast when you're trying to write a book as well!

Blinding white lights flashed into life, revealing a room less cavernous and imposing than she had expected. Instead, the room with the white walls, ceilings, and floor was quite small; small enough for her to run from one end to the other without ever breaking a sweat. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and once they did, she still couldn’t be sure of what she was seeing. There seemed to be a complete lack of color in this small room, as if it had been drained right before her arrival and was shining more brightly because of its recent purge.

            Brynn blinked her eyes a few more times, trying to clear the spots that sprang into existence when the less-than-subtle lights had ignited. Now that she had a proper hold on her surroundings, she could see the impossibility of the room. There were no windows. There were no doors. There was no way in or out. So how had she gotten there?

            “We apologize for any inconvenience your death may cause you at this time,” said a smooth, soothing female voice over what Brynn could only describe as a loudspeaker. If the woman’s voice hadn’t been so calm and collected, it may have taken her less time to understand exactly what she was saying before the sickly sweet smell of sugar hit her nose; like cookies right out of the oven.

            This wasn’t just a room. It was a death chamber.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I would compare it to the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld and the Matched series by Ally Condie. Also I was playing A LOT of Portal when I wrote it so I'm pretty sure that video game crept in there a few times.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Loving dystopian YA WAY too much for my own good made me want to write this.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
It's set in a dystopian future on a planet where there's no such thing as money, politics, or hardship. It seems like it would be a pretty amazing place to live but when everything is handed to you there's also no progress or creativity and Brynn seems to be the only one in the world who's bothered by that... until she meets Jonah. It's full of adventure and lots of mystery (I love murder mysteries but I don't feel clever enough to write one so I made this book a little bit of a non-murder mystery) which unfortunately makes it difficult to describe. Too many twists!

Here's who I'm tagging:
Jolene Perry
Mandi Slack
Jackie Hicken
Jenni James

Misty Moncur

*Use this format for your post

*Answer the ten questions about your current WIP

*Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop on over to meet them