Series Saturday: The PSS Chronicles by Ripley Patton

by Claire Rees

The third book of Ripley Patton's The PSS Chronicles is touring this week and I have reviews of the first three books in the series in case you haven't started it.

Ghost Hand (Book 1)

We follow Olivia a teenage girl who suffers from "psyche sans soma" or "pss", a rare birth defect which in Olivia's care makes her one hand ghost like. Apart from this she leads a normal teenage life, going to school, doing home work and hanging out with her best friend Emma. This is until her calculus lesson where her hand starts to act of its own accord and pulls something out of her classmate causing them to pass out, the only other person to see this is new guy Marcus who doesn’t seem at all shocked or surprised and even covers for her with the teacher. After school she goes to visit her father’s grave and is attacked by two men with strange devices, once again Marcus is there to save her, he tries to explain what is happening but she is too scared and runs away from home to the safety of her home, or so she thinks.

From here Olivia's life gets turned upside down when she discovers that people from her town were not who she thought they were and wish her harm and suddenly her life becomes much more dangerous and nowhere she knows is safe anymore. Ghost Hand by Ripley Patton has a lot of danger and action with a sprinkling of romance which makes it an amazing read. I do recommend this to anyone who loves a really good story with wonderful characters and a good "on the edge of your seat" read. 

Get Ghost Hand FREE at Amazon

Book info
Available formats: ebook and print (372 pages)
Published: November 2012
ISBN13: 9780988491007
Genres: Paranormal thriller
Audience: Young Adult
Source: author
Read: September 2014

Ghost Hold (Book 2)

Ghost Hold follows on from Ghost Hand, Olivia and a friend have joined Marcus and his gang on the run to try to help the next person on the list and get them away from the campfers before they can snatch her. This time it's Olivia who goes undercover at a school with a friend to try to make friends with this new person and does succeed but not in the way she thinks it will go. She discovers once again that she has been lied to and that Marcus already knew the next person on the list personally when he was younger. In order to help this new girl Olivia joins in a special gathering for people with ‘PSS’ and their followers to go and have a party. Along with her new and old friends Olivia has to again fight to survive a massive attack by the campfers and this time they brought guns.  Ghost Hold gets slightly darker and there is more loss of life and more heart wrenching scenes and a lot of secrets get unveiled. 

Again this book is really well written and will keep you addicted page after page as you follow these super brave teenagers trying to do what they think is right to help others. 

Buy Ghost Hold at Amazon

Book Info
Available formats: ebook and print (374 pages)
Published: September 2013
ISBN13: 9780988491038
Genres: Paranormal thriller
Audience: Young Adult
Source: author
Read: September 2014

Ghost Heart (Book 3)

At the start of Ghost Heart we see Passion and Jason, separated from the rest of the group, are on the run hiding in the woods from the campfers. Trying to get back to where the cars were parked the night before they soon run into men from the "hold" and end up being taken back to the leader of the hold, Samantha's father, where they are reunited with Marcus. But not all is as it seems, in the fight with the campfers Marcus was seriously injured and needs time to recover.

Passion soon starts to plan a rescue party for their lost friend Olivia who has been captured by the campfers and taken to a secret campfer place and gets everyone on board.

At the same time Olivia is just trying to survive her prison and plan an escape, hoping all the time that her friends are on their way to save her from this torture and finds help from an unusual source.

Ghost Heart, unlike the first two, is written from the viewpoint of several main characters and is flawlessly done. Despite jumping from person to person the story flows nicely and is easy to follow. 

I very much enjoyed this read and was thrilled to find out there will be another book. If you like a good action and adventure book with lots of lies, secrets, back stabbing and betrayal, then these are the books for you.

Buy Ghost Heart at Amazon

Book info:
Available formats: ebook and print (354 pages)
Published: October 2014
ISBN13: 9780988491052
Genre: Paranormal Thriller
Audience: Young Adult
Source: author
Read: September 2014


About the Author:

Ripley Patton lives in Portland, Oregon with one cat, two teenagers, and a man who wants to live on a boat. She is an award-winning short story writer and author of The PSS Chronicles, a young adult paranormal thriller series.

Ripley doesn't smoke, or drink, or cuss as much as her characters. Her only real vices are writing, eating M&Ms, and watching reality television.

Website  *  Facebook  *  Twitter  *  Goodreads  *  Google +

There is a tour wide giveaway for the book blitz of Ghost Heart. These are the prizes you can win:
- a set of signed cover posters (US only)
- a $10 Amazon gift card (international)

For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small fee is earned when purchases are made at Amazon through the above links. Free ebooks where provided for this review. 

How to keep the buzz going after a blog tour

by Donna Huber

It has been a little while since I wrote a tips post that was mostly for authors, but as I'm wrapping up Amanda Romine Lynch's blog tour for Anabel Divided I thought I might discuss what to do after the tour. I discuss post tour follow-up in my marketing ebook Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour, but in this post I'm going outline more what you can do to keep the buzz going.

One of the things I most see authors failing to do after a tour is continuing to promote the tour stops. You've spent a great deal of time creating the content for these stops, you really want to get as much mileage out of them as you can.

First, let's look at reasons why you want to continue to promote the tour stops.

1. Your followers are not on social media 24 hours a day so they may have missed the tweet or Facebook post on the actual tour dates. If these followers are just followers and have not yet become readers of your book(s), then you want to keep enticing them with tidbits about your book(s).
2. You get new followers. I get several new followers every day on Twitter and a few new likes each week on Facebook. They might not have seen the mentions about the various posts you wrote for the tour.
3. It keeps getting your book and name out there without being a strictly "buy my book" message. I know when I see an author promoting a guest post they did on Girl Who Reads, I'm more likely to promote it again as well. So the post is not only being seen by your new followers, but mine as well.

Second, you want to be smart about how you are promoting these posts so they continue to create buzz without becoming spam themselves.

1. Think about timing of your promotion. Because Twitter moves so fast you could tweet 2 - 3 stops each day for 30 days following the end of the tour. You will want to space them out and vary the time each day that you post and the days each week that a particular stop is promoted. Scheduling tweets through Tweetdeck or HootSuite makes this pretty easy. Facebook doesn't move very fast so you may only want to promote 1 or 2 stops a week. Continue this pattern the following 30 days but only share 1 - 2 stops each day. Then the following 30 days may just promote a stop every other day, then 30 days more of 1 - 2 a week, etc. As long as the content on the posts are evergreen you should be able to get a good year out of those posts.
2. Change the titles or pull out excerpts. When you tweet or post to Facebook you will want to change the wording of the message. You may catch a different audience's eye. If possible ask a question.
3. Be sure to tag the blogger. If they have a Twitter handle be sure to add it to the tweets or tag them (many bloggers have a fan page) in the Facebook post. I'm usually quick to retweet these promotions.
4. Tie the posts into your own blog posts. Did your main character give an interview during the tour? After the tour, you may be writing a blog post on your own blog about your main character and you can link to the tour interview.

One of the big benefits of a blog tour over a city tour is that you have content to share long-term and can reach audiences that may have missed it the first go around. If you have every tried to put together your own tour, you know it is a lot of work. I hope these tips help you get more from your tour than just the 2 or 3 weeks it runs.

Need help planning your own blog tour? 

Pick up Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour for just 99 cents at Amazon and other retailers.

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Review: Tin Lily by Joann Swanson

by Donna Huber

I'm excited to tell you about Tin Lily by Joann Swanson. It was such a great young adult read. You know how I love a good troubled teen novel and as a young adult I would have eaten up a novel like this. Even today as an adult I didn't want to put it down. I hate that I left it on my TBR for so long.

Lily and her mom have left her dad who has become an abusive drunk. A quite, impressionable teen of 15, Lily comes to bear a weight much too heavy for her shoulders. She witnesses the murder of her mother at her father's hand, but that's not all. I'm sure you can imagine how something like that can traumatize a child. Thankful she has a loving aunt who will do anything to help her.

Even with the dramatic opening, it is truly a lovely story of strength and love. And it isn't quite as dark as some of the stories that I read involving troubled teens. It is appropriate in both tone and reading level for its target audience.

All I wanted to do was find more time to read while reading Tin Lily. I didn't want to put it down. Not because it is suspenseful, but because Swanson creates an incredible emotional bond between to the reader and her characters. It was like hearing the story from a friend and needing to know what was happening with them.

And it isn't just the main character that you connect with. Even the minor characters that only have a few scenes in the book will steal your heart. If only there were more boys like Nick, we may see a change in the ways girls view themselves.

Tin Lily by Joann Swanson will definitely be on my "books to give as gifts" list this holiday season. But don't wait til the holidays to grab up this great read for yourself.

Buy Tin Lily at Amazon

Book info:
Available format: ebook & print (276 pages)
Published: July 2014 by Cranky Owl Books
ISBN13: 9780990345305
Genres: family saga, drama
Audience: Young adult
Source: author
Read: October 2014



Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small fee is earned when purchases are made at Amazon through the above links. A free ebook was provided for this review.

Rook: Allie's War by @jcandrijeski

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Share a couple of sentences from your current read to wet the appetite of other readers.

In Jon's words, she was a freak magnet, and always had been. Mia Taylor, Allie's mother, once told Cass that Allie had been nearly abducted, or abducted for short periods of time, six times as a child.

Buy Rook: Allie's War at Amazon 

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Meet Melina Turner

by Heather Kirchhoff

What made you decide to start writing? Was this something you always thought you’d do?

As a child in year 3, I found that I was above average in my writing skills and it came easy for me but I had a brilliant English teacher who saw my poetry and recommended I try out this school poetry competition - it was a worldwide primary to high school competition called ‘Write4Fun’ and I did really good and was published in a book so I was really happy with the outcome and being published at such a young age really made me want to continue. So I did. My writing helps me - whether it be a short, a poem, a novel, lyrics or a movie script - it helps me express my emotions.

How do you come up with your characters or story ideas?

It is really a random thing - I see an object in the house or something weird pops in my head and I go from there and embarrassingly enough - I google search it - see its meaning and work my characters around that. Story Ideas are mainly all original and off the top of my head - most time I wake up - snap my fingers and BAM! Another bloody idea manages to enter my head and be heard - to be honest, I have way too many ideas and usually give them out freely to those who ask.

How do you get inspired to write?

I don’t have much that inspires me - I am more of a random thinker. I thinker of an idea and then jot down the what if’s and what not’s and from there I create major twists and a plot. Every now and then someone or something will inspire me but these days it is quite rare.

What do you do while having writer's block?

What I do when I have writer’s block is simple - Most reasons why we have writer’s block is because we second guess our original story ideas. What I do is read over what I have already written for it -NOT referring to my notes and ideas - and see where inspiration will take me. Most times, when I do this I end up with something totally opposite of what I wanted but that is the fun of writing, that it can be random and surprise even the writer, and that anything goes.

What kind of stories do you write?

I write everything and anything - currently I'm working on publishing two dark fiction prose/narrative shorts and a paranormal horror short. I'm also working on a parafantasy and a mix-genre dystopian.

Who are your favorite authors?

There are many but here are a few; James Patterson, Isobelle Carmody, Janet Evanovich, Jake Bonsignore, Diana Nixon, Cornelia Funke, Heather Killough-Walden, Steig Larsson, Gladys Quintal, Carole Wilkinson, J.K. Accinni, John Marsden, Suzanne Collins, Derek Landy, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kim Harrison, COMICS and many more!

How long have you been writing?

I have been writing since I started primary school and am still writing  So about twelve and a half years.

What are your stories about?

One of the pieces is an introduction to a series about heroes, the paranormal undead, vengeance and morals. It is called Old Betrays and it releases 9th June. 

Another is a volume series called The Deathly-Roses. And is about a young, teenager whose parents try to marry her off to someone rich and well-known in Raverne Town. But what she doesn’t know and suddenly finds out has changed her life forever. Deciding to leave her favourite home and journey far away to find the truth - she finds more than she has bargained for. The second volume continues the journey.

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on Fighting What’s Right, Pieces of Mel (Poetry Collection 1), Surrendering to the Flames and many many more

What do you do when not writing? 

When I am not writing, I am either studying my Certificate II in Animal Care which qualifies me as a Vet Nurse Assistant - hoping to reach Qualified Vet Nurse within a few years. Editing other people’s manuscripts, sketching, singing, camping, and trying to get back into playing my violin.  

Buy The Deathly Roses (Volume 1) at Amazon

About the Author

Melina Turner is an international award-winning poet and lives in Australia in a little town called Gympie. She began her writing at an extremely young age starting in primary school in year 3 when she heard about Write4Fun, a school international writing competition. Her first piece was called Wild Brumbies published in 2003 when she was in year 3. She soon after moved from Nambour to Gympie an hour away, where she was influenced by an amazing English teacher to continue writing. In 2005, when she was in year 5, she was awarded “honoured writer” for her poetry in which she continued and still does. In 2013 she was awarded “Best Poet of 2012” and put into a poetry book that is now in the Library of Congress.
After she began poetry she soon wanted to branch out thus starting The Deathly-Roses Volume 1 a flash fiction narrative-prose piece, original and first of its kind, to be published 2014. She then gapped it out and wrote Volume 2 in 2007 to be published also in 2014; the third to be written in 2014 and publish 2015. Her goal with these books (TDR Volumes) was to make it short and poetic-like to gain non-readers' interest and she believes she has done that. As of 2012, she slowly branched out and started helping co-author for an independent film company called Timothy Mitchell Films, helping with scripts for movies.
As of now she is beginning to write her first finished novel ever and working at her business as an editor and promoter for independent authors.
As of now she will be finishing her novels and aiming for traditional publishing.

Facebook Author Page  *  Twitter  *  blog  *  Goodreads


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