Blog Tour Author Interview with Giveaway: All is Fair by Dee Garretson

Book info:
Title:  All Is Fair
Author:  Dee Garretson
Published by: Swoon Reads
Publication date: January 22nd 2019
Genres: Historical, Romance, Young Adult

Synopsis:

Lady Mina Tretheway knows she’s destined for greater things than her fancy boarding school, where she’s being taught to be a proper English lady. It’s 1918, and war is raging across Europe. Unlike her father and brother, who are able to assist in the war effort, Mina is stuck sorting out which fork should be used with which dinner course.

When Mina receives a telegram that’s written in code, she finally has her chance to do something big. She returns to her childhood home of Hallington Manor, joined by a family friend, Lord Andrew Graham, and a dashing and mysterious young American, Lucas. The three of them must band together to work on a dangerous project that could turn the tide of the war.

Thrilled that she gets to contribute to the war effort at least, Mina jumps headfirst into the world of cryptic messages, spycraft, and international intrigue. She, Lucas, and Andrew have to work quickly, because if they don’t succeed, more soldiers will disappear into the darkness of war.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes and Noble / iBooks / Kobo

Author Interview:
1.    What does your writing process look like? Do you know the whole story when you start?  Or do you just start writing and go with it (seat of the pants writing)?  If you plan it out, how do you do that?  Outline, notecards, post-it-notes, etc.? 
I am definitely a seat-of-the-pants writer. I start out with a basic idea but the details of the plot don’t come to me until I’m actually writing. That means I have to backtrack a lot to make sure the new elements I come up with fit into the bits I’ve already written. It’s not the most efficient way to write but it’s what works for me. I wish I was better at planning and outlining!

2.    Do you edit as you go, or wait till you're finished before you edit?  How many times would you say you go over it yourself before having another set of eyes look it over?
I always edit as I go. It’s tied in to not working from an outline like I described above. I’ve never really counted how many times I go over something before I show it to a beta reader. Maybe 7 times? I don’t like to let anyone read my work until it feels semi-polished.

3.    Are you part of a writers group that gets together and helps each other with their writing?
 I am part of some writer’s groups but it’s more to connect with other writers and a way for me to give back to the writing community to help those just starting out. I don’t really use the groups as beta readers for my own work because of the deadlines I work under. I do have some trusted readers who help me with my stories.

4.    How do you come up with your ideas for your stories?
Usually it’s a place, an object or something I read about a particular time period that sparks an idea. I’m particularly fascinated by looking at a setting, like a house and thinking about what was there before it was built, who built it and who lived in it. All of those people would have had their own stories, and if I don’t know them, I can make up a story about that place.

5.    For the historical parts of your book, how much research did you do for the novel to try to be accurate?
I’m obsessed with research. It’s hard to limit it, because I’m not just doing the research on the big events. I want to research how ordinary people lived and that involves reading many different sources. Every time I find something interesting it leads me down a different trail. I’m very lucky to live in a city with an excellent library, which is an enormous help. 

6.   What are your favorite:
Books/authors/genres: I like a wide range of genres except I don’t read many with contemporary settings unless they are mysteries or thrillers.
My favorite books are ones I reread: Pride and Prejudice, Dune, Harry Potter, Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes books, and Elizabeth George’s Amelia Peabody series.
Movies/TV Shows
I am a huge Lord of the Ring fan. I don’t know how many times I’ve rewatched the extended editions of the films, but they are one of my go-to movies when I am stressed out and need to relax.
I’m also a big Star Wars fan. I keep a little R2D2 figure by my writing area to remind me that not all communication is through words.
I really love adventure shows of any time period, historical dramas and mysteries, and science fiction
Music- It depends on the day! I can’t listen to music when I work or when I read for pleasure, so that limits the amount I listen to. My tastes jump all over the place. I particularly like 1940s music, reggae and classic rock from the 1970s.
Food/Writing snack
I’m afraid I’m the typical writer-coffee and chocolate. And pizza at the end of a long day of writing, though I do love to try new foods when I have the chance. For every book I write, I research what food would work with the story even if I don’t include much of it in the actual finished book.

Author Bio:

Dee writes contemporary, science fiction and historical adventure stories for a wide range of ages. Her books have been chosen as Junior Library Guild selections, the Scholastic Book Club, and have been nominated for numerous state awards lists. In addition to books published under her own name, she also writes for the Boxcar Children series. Connect with her on twitter at @deegarretson or find out more about her books at deegarretson.com

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

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Audio Book Review: Passion (Fallen #3) by Lauren Kate (September Sequel Challenge #2)

Once again I downloaded the audio book from the library to go on with this story. And I really enjoyed a lot about this next part in the series.  It was filled with so many different periods in history, which was a lot of fun.  We didn't get to see all of the characters that much in this book, other than of course Luce and Daniel, although the others did show up here and there for small parts of the story.  If you haven't read this far in the series yet, you can stop here and go back and read my review of the first book, Fallen, so that I don't give you any spoilers. 

In this story we pick up right where we left off from book 2, Torment, Luce has taken off inside of an Announcer, and the others are following her, trying to find her.  Especially Daniel.  Luce is trying to understand just why do they always fall in love.  It leads to death for her every time, and horrible heartbreak for Daniel every time.  And she doesn't know just why they fell in love, or if they are just compelled to because of the curse.  And so she is going back to her past lives to try to figure out why they love each other.  Along the way she will pick up someone named Bill, a gargoyle, who is there to help her figure out what she wants to see.  She will find out in some lives she is a much different girl than she is now.  She will see Daniel in all of his different human bodies as well.  We get to see how she dies, and Luce gets to actually be inside the bodies to experience the death in some of the situations.  I loved all the reincarnations, although so many were in Europe and places other than America, even before it got into the more ancient history.  But there was World War I, and World War II.  Russia, Shakespeare's time, ancient Mayans, and the one I was beginning to wonder if they'd have, ancient Egypt.

The whole time Daniel is following her, always showing up just right after she's left it seems.  And he is just hoping that she won't do something that could mess up all of history, including their love.  In the end, they will find each other, but it will be after something horrible is about to be set in motion.  You see the devil himself will show up, and he will have something to say about this whole thing with Luce and Daniel, and his own wants.  And we'll be left waiting to find out how the gang will fight him, and whether Luce and Daniel's love will really survive, and if they can finally break the curse.

I liked it better than the first two, although there were still moments I wanted to smack Luce, and moments that Daniel was still kind of a controlling jerk.  But again, I'm so ready to read the next book and find out what happens.  Or should I say listen to the next book.  I also heard there is going to be a 5th book, told from Cam's point of view.  And does anyone know when the movie comes out?  I thought it was this fall, but I haven't seen any previews for it.

Review and Blog Tour: Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (Prisoner of Night and Fog #2) by Anne Blankman (And Giveaway)

First, thanks to Balzer and Bray and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this book.  I requested it clear back in November, as soon as I saw it available because I LOVED the first book, Prisoner of Night and Fog, and you can go read my review of that one HERE.  What I love about this series is that it is about Hitler, but it starts after World War I, and we are seeing his rise and leading up to World War II.  I have always been fascinated and had to read all things about World War II. Rarely did I ever really get my interest peaked by World War I history. But the first book did that for me.  To see how they really were all connected, and one really led to the other, and that is why I love this book, and now its sequel, so much. 

BOOK DETAILS
Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (Prisoner of Night and Fog #2)
by Anne Blankman
416 pages
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release Date: April 21st 2015

At the end of the first book Gretchen and Daniel had escaped from Germany and Hitler.  Gretchen had always looked up to Hitler, he had been her Uncle Dolf.  But when she fell in love with a Jew, and found out that Hitler was behind the murder of her father, she was now no longer his darling.  She lost her mother by having to run away, and her mother had to go live with her parents.  Her brother was now dead, also because of Hitler.  Daniel had to leave his family as well.  This book begins with Gretchen staying with her friend that had lived in the boarding house her mother ran in the first book.  He is a psychologist, and had been there to try to learn more about Hitler and study him.  He's now invited Gretchen to live with his family and continue her schooling.  Daniel is working for a paper in England, only instead of the hard-hitting reporting that he was used to, he is now doing the social/gossip page.  He gets a message that someone in his family needs him and he goes back to Germany, even knowing it will be dangerous for him there.  When Gretchen gets a coded message saying that Daniel has been charged with a murder and is on the run, she knows that she must go back and help him.  Back in Germany they must try to prove Daniel's innocence while staying out of the hands of Hitler and his men, who will probably execute them on sight.  It is a very suspenseful story, but so much stuff to learn about the time period.  German gangsters, how the police became part of Hitler's group, how all the political parties used to get along in the country.

I really just love how the author weaves true historical facts and events in with wonderful fictional characters that you really care about.  Characters that don't make it through everything unscathed, they suffer tragedies and losses and even permanent debilitating injuries.  And for the most part, they do act the way you would think people really act.  Even if there is still some of the silly stuff that people in love in books seem to do.  And it was like watching the Titanic movie, you rooted for the people, even knowing that in the end the really bad things, like the boat sinking or in this case Hitler rising to power, are still going to happen.  Even though you know if they do prove what they try to prove, it won't actually end up saving Germany and all the people in the Holocaust, you still root for them to do what they can.  So irritated that the copy of the first book I ordered for the school library where I work hasn't arrived yet, because reading this sequel made me want to talk and share the first one again with teachers and students. 

BOOK LINKS:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22838220-conspiracy-of-blood-and-smoke?ac=1
Amazon paperback: http://tinyurl.com/l8ecbco
Barnes and Noble:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/conspiracy-of-blood-and-smoke-anne-blankman/1120020441?ean=9780062278845
Book Depository: http://www.bookdepository.com/Conspiracy-Blood-Smoke-Anne-Blankman/9780062278845
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/conspiracy-of-blood-and-smoke/id903967365?mt=11
Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/es-ES/ebook/conspiracy-of-blood-and-smoke

OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES:
Prisoner of Night and Fog: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17668473-prisoner-of-night-and-fog

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anne Blankman may have been meant to be a writer because her parents named her for Anne of Green Gables. She grew up in an old house with gables (gray, unfortunately) in upstate New York. When she wasn't writing or reading, she was rowing on the crew team, taking ballet lessons, fencing and swimming. She graduated from Union College with degrees in English and history, which comes in handy when she writes historical fiction.

After earning a master's degree in information science, Anne began working as a youth services librarian. Currently, she lives in southeastern Virginia with her family. When she's not writing young adult fiction, she's playing with her daughter, training for races with her husband, working at her amazing library branch, learning to knit (badly), and reading.

Anne Blankman is the author of PRISONER OF NIGHT AND FOG, the first in a three-book deal slated for publication in spring 2014 from Balzer + Bray | HarperCollins. She is represented by Tracey Adams of Adams Literary.

AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: http://www.anneblankman.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7012378.Anne_Blankman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnneBlankman

TOUR SCHEDULE:
 http://fantasticflyingbookclub.blogspot.com/2015/02/tour-schedule-conspiracy-of-blood-and.html

GIVEAWAY
Details: 3 prizes
GRAND PRIZE: Win a signed ARC of PRISONER OF NIGHT AND FOG and a signed ARC of CONSPIRACY OF BLOOD AND SMOKE (US Only)
FIRST PRIZE:  Win (1) of (2) signed ARCs of CONSPIRACY OF BLOOD AND SMOKE (US Only)

Starts: April 13th, 2015
Ends: April 22nd, 2015


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Waiting on Wednesday - Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (Prisoner of Night and Fog #2) by Anne Blankman

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting.  This week I've picked the sequel to a book I LOVED!!  Prisoner of Night and Fog got me really thinking about a period of history I hadn't really thought about before.  Between World War I and II.  And right about the time I read this, I think the History Channel put out a show talking about the two World Wars and kind of postulating that really they were all one big war.  Now that there is a cover for the 2nd book, I'm ready to use it for my Wednesday post.  And here is the blurb from Goodreads.com: 

The girl known as Gretchen Whitestone has a secret: She used to be part of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. More than a year after she made an enemy of her old family friend and fled Munich, she lives with a kindly English family, posing as an ordinary German immigrant, and is preparing to graduate from high school. Her love, Daniel Cohen, is a reporter in town. For the first time in her life, Gretchen is content.

But then, Daniel gets a telegram that sends him back to Germany, and Gretchen’s world turns upside-down. And when she receives word that Daniel is wanted for murder, she has to face the danger she thought she’d escaped-and return to her homeland.

Gretchen must do everything she can to avoid capture and recognition, even though saving Daniel will mean consorting with her former friends, the Nazi elite. And as they work to clear Daniel’s name, Gretchen and Daniel discover a deadly conspiracy stretching from the slums of Berlin to the Reichstag itself. Can they dig up the explosive truth and get out in time-or will Hitler discover them first?

I really cannot wait to read this book!  And it's not out till April!  I'm hoping that once again I can get an e-galley to read.  I loved the first one so much I made sure to immediately put it on my list to order books for my high school library this year. And this will be the same.  

So what are you waiting on this week? 

Review Prisoner of Night and Fog by Anne Blankman

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Balzer and Bray for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  I always am intrigued and fascinated by stories about World War II.  Actually this book is pre-World War II.  It is from Hitler's rise.  And what was so interesting about the premise of this book is that it is from the viewpoint of a girl who has grown up in the favor of Hitler.  In fact she has grown up calling him Uncle Dolf.

Gretchen is our main character.  Her father died when he threw himself in front of Hitler and took the bullets meant for him.  Since then Hitler has tried to treat Gretchen and her family as his own family.  He was friends with Gretchen's father from World War I.  Like most Germans during this time, her family is struggling.  Since her father's death they've lived in a boarding house where her mother does the cooking and Gretchen helps.  Gretchen's brother Reinhard also lives in the boarding house, only he is a soldier for Hitler.  It is soon made evident that Gretchen fears her brother, that he will play such cruel tricks on her that she will hook a chair under the doorknob at night to keep him out.  You see Reinhard is the violent type of man many think of when they think of Nazis.  He has no problem with punching his sister, or setting up a wire on the stairs that would trip her.  Their mother doesn't seem to be willing to do anything about Reinhard.  We even begin the story as Reinhard and his friend Kurt almost run over a Jew, and then they jump out of the car and chase him down an alley to beat him up.  Even though Gretchen has been brought up to dislike Jews, there is something that gets to her.  The fear in the man's eyes.  So she tries to use something that Hitler once mentioned, that the street brawls should stop as they only give Hitler a bad name.  She finally gets her brother to leave him alone, mainly because the police are coming, and at this time, the police are not owned by Hitler yet.  But her brother tells her not to come to the dinner with Uncle Dolf that they were planning to go to.  So she and her friend Eva will have to go home on their own. But before Gretchen gets back to Eva, another Jewish man stops her.  This one is young, and attractive quite to Gretchen's surprise.  And he says that it is possible there was something strange about her father's death.  That maybe he didn't mean to get in front of Hitler, that maybe he was murdered.  Which Gretchen did notice a bullet hole in the back of her father's shirt, which doesn't make sense unless someone in the group he was marching with shot him too.

Gretchen's world begins to fray at the edges, she doesn't quite know what to believe anymore.  And as she learns more about her father's past, as well as learning more about exactly what Hitler is actually talking about doing to the Jews, she finds her life getting more and more dangerous.  Her brother is still a danger, and becomes even more so as he finds her spending time with a Jew.  Not only that, Uncle Dolf will disappoint her, and she will see that maybe she can't trust him anymore either, giving more credence to the bad things she is learning.

While the main characters may be fictional for the story, there are all the actual historical figures within the story.  Including Eva, Hitler's mistress, his niece, and all his fellow party members.  I really love how the author tied all these things together in such a creative way, and a really great story.  I had to know what would happen, and how Gretchen put together the pieces about what her whole life has really been hiding.  And I was pleased to read in the notes at the end that there will be a sequel.  While the book definitely left off at a perfectly good ending, there is so much more that could be done as we haven't even reached the actual WWII yet.  It's not up on Goodreads yet, but I'll be keeping my eyes on that so I can put it on my TBR list!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Yes, I know I'm way behind everyone else on this one.  I've been meaning to read it for awhile.  But it was a big book, and I just had so many other things to read, that I just kept putting it on the back burner.  Finally I decided that it was time to read it before the movie comes out this November.  So when I finished my last book, I went ahead and checked a copy of this one out from the bookstore where I work.  And, once I picked it up, and got past the first 20-25 pages, I was hooked.
I loved this family that Liesel ended up with.  Her new mother Rosa, loved the way she was so grumpy, but you knew that it was done with love.  And her new father, Hans, just the way he stayed with her every night because of her nightmares.  And then her best friend Rudy, so funny, and what a great friend!  I've always had to read everything I could on the Holocaust.  Most of those books were told about Jewish people, and what they survived, or didn't survive.  This is truly a story of a basically "normal" German family.  They don't seem to have any reason to necessarily be against this war.  In fact Liesel is even in the Hitler Youth Organization at school.  When they do take in Max, a young Jewish man, it isn't because they are trying to fight what is going on in their country, it is because of a favor Hans owed to a friend in World War I.  It was just so interesting to read about the German side of the story.  While it is unforgivable that so much happened and nothing was done about it, this look at how it could have happened, is a great insight.  The fact that the author says he got his ideas from his family telling stories of their old days in Germany makes it even more fascinating.  The raids on the town, the fact that here the Germans were promised if all the Jews were taken care of they would be prosperous, yet here many were still living without enough food.  Most of what happened in this story just seemed so realistic in the way things happened.  Not everyone lived happily ever after.  But not everyone stayed maybe the way you would expect all Germans to stay.  Just because they were the good guys, doesn't mean they all survived.
Other parts of the book that I really liked, the books/drawings that Max made for Liesel.  The story that Liesel ended up writing.  I liked that what could have become a romance, Max and Liesel, never did, it stayed as a brother sister relationship.
This was a book that was 550 pages long.  I started reading on Sunday, and finished on Tuesday.  And I would have been finished sooner had it been summer time and I hadn't had to work Monday or Tuesday.  Now, I'm just waiting to see the movie, and I can only hope that they will not change too many things that will take away what makes the story so great.  I mean, look at what happened with the Hunger Games, while it was a great movie on its own, the parts of the book that I really liked, that made it what it was, were left out.
Anyway, I guess I am now one of the people that will just gush and gush about how wonderful this book is.  How about you?  Have you read it? What did you think?

P.S. - While you're here, make sure you go check out my Fierce Reads Giveaway HERE where there will be 5 winners!!