Book Coop

Hello bookworms! This is Nicole here. It's been so hectic these few weeks for me with starting my university year and I finally got the time to post our monthly newsletter! 

I'm so excited to be able to post these month's book coop because I joined the The Double Trouble- Twin Reading Challenge earlier this year! So here's the list of books our team has read from our review request paired with the books we read from our personal bookshelf.

Review Request Coop                                                            Bookshelf Coop

The Thirteenth Prophet by T. Lucas Earle                          Under the Dome by Stephen King

Open Your Eyes by Jake Olson                                             Papertown by John Green

Escape the Doubt by Andrea Michelle                                 Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas

The reviews for those request coop will be definitely come around soon so keep an eye on it if you're interested to know more! I'm not going to promise we will do any review for the personal bookshelf coop books as life are getting more hectic for both Donna and I. I am starting my freshman year in college while Donna will be pursuing her graduate degree so please do understand that our time for reviewing books will be very limited now. 

I apologise for the delay to all the authors or publishers that books we accepted for reviews. We will review every book that we had agreed to review so rest assured. For the time being, BWS is not accepting any review request therefore we will not reply to any of the request emails. However, I will send out a notification email once we are back in receiving review request. Therefore, feel free to drop in an expression of interest to request a review!

The good news is BWS will definitely accept request in the near future. Once we had settled everything and are able to review books, I will let everyone know with a Book Coop post as well as through Google+. Author interview and guest post, however, is another matter. I am very happy to say that BWS still do and will feature author interview, book spotlight, and guest post! Just approach us through email and we will be more than happy to host those things for you.

I would like to say thank you for everyone who is reading and has been reading BWS for a while, or since we started (welcome to first-timers! So glad to have another enthusiastic bookworm! Even if you are not, it doesn't matter as we love to have another reader. We will have book giveaways and blog tours coming up; to those interested, you could sign up and participate in the giveaways :) Happy reading, everyone!

Bookworm Buzz

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: ANDREA MICHELLE

Today, we have the amazing author of Escape the Doubt for an interview with us. Read on to know more about her debut novel, what's she's currently working on, how she overcomes writer's block, and some advice shared with the rest of us.

Escape the Doubt book cover

BWS: Hi Andrea, thank you for agreeing to this interview. What inspired you to write Escape the Doubt?

Andrea: Escape the Doubt is actually inspired a lot from my own past. Although the story is fictional, many of the emotions involved in the story were my own at the age. In fact, the poems in the novel were written by me when I was sixteen and seventeen years old.

BWS: Give us an insight into your main character in Escape the Doubt. How did you come up with Riley Shaw’s character? 

Andrea: Riley Shaw is a troubled seventeen year old. She struggles with relationships. She knows she wants to love and she wants to be loved. But she doesn’t believe love exist, not forever. She see’s love as being full of lies and secrets. Men cheat and break hearts. She is full of doubt about love, life and everything in between. I came up with Riley by tapping into what I felt like at that age. I then added in what I could imagine it might feel like to have been through everything she had been through. It’s not her fault she is so scared. She wants to change, wants so badly to have things different. She just doesn’t know how to let go of her past and move forward.

BWS: What are you working on at the minute?

Andrea: I am working on the sequel in this series, Embrace the Moment. It is a continuation to their story. I’m also working on a NA Romantic Suspense Novel that I began before Escape the Doubt. Stories are funny like that. One spoke louder than the other. I also have an Adult Contemporary Romance Novel in the works, Abandoned Identity. Many stories are swirling in my mind and multiple WIP’s sit on my laptop but they’re only so many hours in the day. LOL ;)

BWS: Do you ever get writer’s block? If so, how do you overcome it?

Andrea: Yes, for example with my sequel. I’m content with the ending in Escape the Doubt. There is just so much more to tell to their story. However, I don’t want to ugly up their beautiful just to create conflict. So I’m trying to stay true to the story they want me to tell. As far as overcoming it... MUSIC. It is an addiction and almost necessary for me to write to. It creates inspiration. 

BWS: Where is your favorite place to write? 

Andrea: You might find this funny, but lying in my bathtub when I’m relaxed.

Bookworm Buzz

INTERVIEW WITH JUAN CARLOS CANTU

Hello bookworms! Today we have an author interview with Juan Carlos Cantu, who penned Age Warfare. To those who have checked out our review of the book, here's a little insight to the brain behind Age Warfare.

Hi Juan, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Thank you for the opportunity to tell your audience a little bit about me and my literary work. I’m originally from Mexico, and came to the U.S. as a student some 10 years ago. My educational background is not a literary one -I’m an economist by training- but I’ve always had a knack for writing. Ever since I moved here I’ve always lived in Texas. After a couple of years in Austin (a town I learned to love) I now live Houston. I really don’t write for a living (I have a full-time job, which is not related to publishing in any way). I am simply someone who likes to share and exchange ideas.

What inspired you to write your first novel?

I’ve always been concerned about the environment. The U.S. has many great things, but I remember one of the surprises I experienced coming here was how much waste is produced --how little recycling is done. Not that where I come from everyone recycles, but my expectation was to find a very well-developed recycling culture here. Another major shock for me was to learn how a very big portion of the population don’t think climate change even exists.

So, after a couple of months reading about finance, energy, demographics and the environment, and with the encouragement of a friend, I came up with the idea for Age Warfare. The goal was to create a story palatable enough to be read as an action-style, fast-paced novel, but with the underpinnings of all these environmental concepts that are currently afflicting the planet and which many people around the world seem to disregard (or more dishearteningly, ignore). The inspiration came from the realization that something genuinely different could be written by combining youth activism, social networks, political movements, energy economics, ecological depletion, and demographic imbalances -all of this wrapped up in a nail-biter story that stealthily lays out the importance of taking care of the planet. This, is what Age Warfare is.

Give us an insight into your main character in Age Warfare. How did you come up with Ethan Maxwell’s character? 

The story of Ethan Maxwell in Age Warfare is a story of personal transformation. It’s the evolution from apathy into action. He starts off as a very disengaged, disgruntled teenager, and throughout the novel you witness his evolution into someone who is determined to change the world. At first, he is a little bit misunderstood, and cares about stuff that not everyone is interested in, but it comes a point in the story when his leadership skills blossom and he becomes an instrumental figure in the struggle of his entire generation.

In creating Ethan, I needed someone who was inspiring; a leader who was able to harness the power of social networks and defy the status quo to improve the conditions of his generation. But I also did not want to create this cliché-ridden main character who is invincible, the best at everything he tries; the impossibly good-looking lad who gets all the girls he wants, or the one who always kicks ass. I wanted to keep him real. With great strengths, but with great flaws also, simply because that is how we all are. I wanted someone reachable, relatable, and complex. His name came from from a friend’s suggestion at the word “Maxwell” (as in Maxwell House, but without the “House” part, since Ethan would grow “homeless” if the status quo keeps its course).

What are you working on at the minute?

During my free time, I am currently working on Age Warfare’s sequel. I have already laid out the structure of the story.

Do you ever get writer’s block? If so, how do you overcome it?

I really did not “suffer” from that during the time I wrote Age Warfare. I wrote it in a span of 4 ½ month. The creation process of that story was extremely intense. Every time I had free time I sat down and wrote 500 to 750 words, and that happened mostly every day. The emotional rush of that creative period was extremely, extremely enjoyable. Now, I must say I don’t feel the same way. Probably because it’s more about extending characters and situations that have already been created in the first one, or simply because I have allowed myself time write about other stuff.