BOOK BLITZ - GIVEAWAYS & EXCERPT - DEBT COLLECTOR by SUSAN KAYE QUINN

Today on Novels On The Run I have a Book Blitz for DEBT COLLECTOR  by SUSAN KAYE QUINN.  Synopsis and Giveaways with a great excerpt to wet your whistle. So go forth and check it all out. Note one giveaway is USA only and the digital book is International. Please also sign on HERE for Susan's newsletter. 

Michelle

Debt Collector by Susan Kaye Quinn 

Series: Debt Collector, Serial 1-3

Publication date: 2013 

Genre: NA Future-Noir 

Synopsis: 

EPISODES 1-3 (Delirium, Agony, Ecstasy) of the Debt Collector serial. Contains mature content and themes. For young-adult-appropriate thrills, see Susan's bestselling Mindjack series.

What's your life worth on the open market?
A debt collector can tell you precisely.


Lirium plays the part of the grim reaper well, with his dark trenchcoat, jackboots, and the black marks on his soul that every debt collector carries. He's just in it for his cut, the ten percent of the life energy he collects before he transfers it on to the high potentials, the people who will make the world a better place with their brains, their work, and their lives. That hit of life energy, a bottle of vodka, and a visit from one of Madam Anastazja's sex workers keep him alive, stable, and mostly sane... until he collects again. But when his recovery ritual is disrupted by a sex worker who isn't what she seems, he has to choose between doing an illegal hit for a girl whose story has more holes than his soul or facing the bottle alone--a dark pit he's not sure he'll be able to climb out of again.

The first three episodes of the Debt Collector serial are collectively the length of a short novel, or 152 pages. These are the first three of nine episodes in the first season of The Debt Collector serial. This dark and gritty future-noir is about a world where your life-worth is tabulated on the open market and going into debt risks a lot more than your credit rating. Episode 4, Broken, releases 4/17/13. For more about the Debt Collector serial, see DebtCollectorSeries.com

Excerpt from Delirium (Debt Collector 1) 

by Susan Kaye Quinn: 

The shakes have mostly settled out, but I still take care not to spill as I fill all three shot glasses with pure Polish wódka, neat. The bottle wasn’t expensive, but it’s a step up from the stuff at the local liquor stop, which is only one shade away from rubbing alcohol and almost as deadly. Moe, Larry, and Curly stare at me from the glasses, their faces fixed forever in an approving smirk, a disgusted frown, and a wide-eyed dumbfounded look of shock, respectively. All three are apt reactions to my life, my profession, and the ritual the four of us are engaging in once again.

“Hello boys.” I salute them. “Made it home without losing my breakfast.” They’re still judging me with their looks, so I pick up Larry’s shot, throw it back, and slam it down, his look of frozen disgust turned away. The vodka burns, and I cough even though I expect it. The ten percent still buzzes inside me, and I know the life force is kicking against the alcoholic onslaught carving a liquid path of happy through my system.

I’ve already placed my order with Madam Anastazja for one of her high-end sex workers who cater to collectors. No familiar faces, I added online this time. It’s easier to get lost in a girl when I don’t know her face, yet. Lost is where I need to be right now, and I have just the recipe to get there. Wait till the nausea passes. Get a hot shower and a change of clothes. Stow my trenchcoat in the closet by the door until I need to dress the part of Death again. Do three shots with the boys to get me started, then spend an hour of tangled limbs and ecstasy in the sheets with the girl. Finally, split the rest of the bottle until we’re both so stupid drunk we don’t remember any of it.

It’s my routine, it makes me forget the spook and the fresh black mark on my soul, and I don’t mess with it. The next day, I’m back to normal, on the sort of even-keel that gets me through the day and the night and the day after that. Until I collect again.

Plus it saves me from drinking the entire bottle alone.

Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/series/100549-debt-collector

AUTHOR BIO 

Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. Her teachers pretended not to notice and only confiscated her stories a couple times.


Susan left writing behind to pursue a bunch of engineering degrees, but she was drawn back to writing by an irresistible urge to share her stories with her niece, her kids, and all the wonderful friends she’s met along the way.


She doesn’t have to sneak her notes anymore, which is too bad.


Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as a much as she can handle.

Author Links: 

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

GIVEAWAY TIME

GRAND PRIZE

US ONLY

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GIVEAWAY # 2

one (1) ebook copy of of the first Debt Collector episode (Delirium). 

Open internationally

LEAVE YOU EMAIL ADDRESS AND A COMMENT

State mobi, pdf or epub file

STARTS NOW

ENDS MAY 13TH 2013

AWESOME INTERVIEW & SIGNED GIVEAWAYS WITH LAUREN OLIVER AUTHOR OF DELIRIUM SERIES , BEFORE I FALL AND LIESL AND PO

I would like to welcome Lauren Oliver to Novels On The Run and thank her for taking time to answer my questions. I would also like to thank her for totally braining us with Delirium and Pandemonium’s cliffhanger endings.....OMG!! * faceplant* ...then starts searching for Requiem’s countdown widget:D

Michelle:   Lauren , in 10 words or less could you please describe Lauren, the author to us?

Lauren:  Driven, passionate, melodramatic, silly. Likes good food and great company.

Michelle:   Please describe an average day in the life of Lauren Oliver?

Lauren:  There really is no such thing as an “average” day for me. When I’m in Brooklyn, I get up at 7:30 and try and get my writing done early. My days are often filled with meetings, publicity demands, gym time, and social obligations. In the evening I like to cook for friends or hang with my fiancé on the couch, and I always try and get to bed by 11 p.m. But I’m often travelling, and when I’m on tour, anything goes! Right now, for example, I’m typing this from an airport in Korea.

Michelle:  What character in either Delirium or Pandemonium was the hardest for you to give a voice to and why?

HODDER & STOUGHTON AUSTRALIA

Lauren:  I initially had trouble giving voice to Julian, because at the start of Pandemonium he is so strictly regimented in his views, so orthodox in his philosophy, and I had trouble sympathizing with him. I had to find his humanity within that.

Michelle:   I ask a lot of authors this, I find it very interesting their responses to the music. I like to find the lyric vids and put in my interviews. Becca Fitzpatrick gave me some wonderful songs for her characters.

What song would describe : Alex & Lena's Relationship, Lena & Julian's friendship, Lena, Alex, Julian?

Lauren:  Alex and Lena’s relationship 

 Romeo and Juliet, by Dire Straits

Lauren:  Lena and Julian’s friendship

 Lucky Now, by Ryan Adams

Lauren:   Lena  

Strong by Kelly Clarkson

Lauren:  Alex 

Resistance, by Muse

Lauren:  Julian 

 So Alive, by Ryan Adams

"So Alive"

Today I watched the boats
Moving through the harbor
Walking on water
In your arms I'd stay
Forever if I could
Forever if I may
Keeps me in your thoughts, don't disappear

I am on your side
And so alive
So alive it isn't real

If this is how I feel
Then nothing now is true
And nothing now can ever be taken away from you
Sinking in the past
The things that shouldn't last
Just put to bed and stand beside me
Stand beside me

Always on your side
I'm on your side
And so alive it isn't real

I am on your side
And so alive
And so alive
And so alive

I am on your side
I am on your side
I am on your side
And so alive
So alive

Michelle:    Both Delirium and Pandemonium are intense reads. I think Pandemonium more so. How did you ‘feel’ when you were writing Pandemonium? I was quite tense the whole time reading the book, I oftened wondered where an author goes to, to write such emotion into their writing?

Lauren:  I sometimes get emotional, definitely, although I think my primary emotional state is usually one of anxiety. I worry, especially during very important scenes, that I won’t be able to translate the vision in my head to the page—that the words I find will be insufficient or won’t convey everything I want to convey. This anxiety gets aggravated the more intense the scene. Sometimes I actually have to get up and walk around and give myself a break—otherwise, I get too paralysed with anxiety to write at all!


Michelle:   Now, you don’t have to answer this but I have to ask...hehe!

Do you and the publishing team have a good ol laugh at us readers before the book is released, knowing the cliffhanger at the end of the book is going to almost kill the reader. Like seriously....I just face planted my desk and watched my grey hairs sprout on my head for the next year long wait...cruel ..people!! hehe! Seriously, it is a brilliant cliffhanger to wait out. And , yes this is a question, I just tangented.

Lauren:  No, I don’t laugh! I don’t take pleasure in a reader’s pain...at least, I don’t take very much pleasure in it. It’s funny, because I was so consumed with the arc of the book, and the act of writing and conceiving the trilogy as a whole, that I never stopped to think about the fact that the end of Pandemonium was such a cliffhanger! I know it seems improbable, but it didn’t really occur to me...I just knew I had to end the book that way.


Michelle:  Are you able to give us a non spoiler quote from ‘Requiem’? Just a tit bit for the pain we are all feeling for a year. I don’t need to know even who said what...just an itsy bitsy.....non spoiling tit bit with a big cherry please on top.


Lauren:  Sure! I’m not going to tell you who says it, though. 

“I remember feeling just like that. . .torn apart by feeling, split in two, caught between loyalties and desires. That’s how the diseased world is. That’s how it was for me, before I was cured.”


Michelle:   Australia, I need to ask a couple questions. You toured here recently and tried the wonderful food we have to offer. What is the weirdest or yuckiest food you have tried?

Lauren:  I came directly from the Philippines before arriving in Australia. There, I tried fried pig intestine and chopped pig snout on toast. So really, no Aussie food struck me as particularly strange.  I did try Vegemite, and I loved it! 

We have a winner! A Vegemite lover:)


Michelle:  What was the most delish Aussie food you tried and want a care pack every month delivered?


Lauren:  I love Lamingtons, although I admit I’ve had them before! I didn’t actually get to try Kangaroo steak and I’m quite upset about it, so I’d love that delivered in a care package.


Michelle:   What was the first thing you can remember an Australian saying to you and you just looked at them and asked them to please explain?

Lauren:  Shemozzle! I had never heard that word before and now I’m obsessed with it. (The usage was: “Well, that was a bit of a shemozzle, wasn’t it?) I also got confused when someone asked me if I wanted a durry!

AAhhh, yes, the shemozzle....bit of a mess, bit of confusion.

Durry = cigarette, rollie

Michelle : Thank you Lauren very much for answering my questions. I hope you had a lovely , fun trip here , sounds like the Vegemite was agreeable. Like seriously, nothing like a toastie with vegemite in it, or a bacon and vegemite baguette. Just don’t spread it like you are putting cream on a pavlova..... nice and easy is the way to go.

Michelle

GIVEAWAY TIME

I HAVE 3 SIGNED 6" X 8" PRINTS

3 WINNERS

INTERNATIONAL!!!

FOR THIS PARTICULAR GIVEAWAY I HAVE CHOSEN A COUPLE OF DIFFERENT EDITION COVERS FOR DELIRIUM SERIES. I HAVE MOST COVERS SIGNED BY LAUREN .

WITH FLASH ON

WITH FLASH OFF

THESE ARE THE EXACT PRINTS WINNERS WILL RECEIVE. IN MY MAD IMAGE EDITING SKILLS....HA! I MADE THE CORNERS ROUNDED. EACH PRINT IS REGULAR CUT CORNERS FOR FRAMING, LIKE PANDEMONIUM PRINT ( CENTRE)

PLEASE FOLLOW OUR BLOG

- GFC NAME IN COMMENTS

PLEASE LEAVE EMAIL ADDRESS

TELL ME WHAT PART OF INTERVIEW YOU LIKED THE MOST

GIVEAWAY STARTS NOW

ENDS 11TH MAY 2012 MIDNIGHT

GOOD LUCK!!

Michelle

BOOK REVIEW: DELIRIUM by LAUREN OLIVER

Title:  DELIRIUM
Author:   LAUREN OLIVER
Publisher:  Harper Teen
Pages:  441 pages (hardcover)
Acquired:  Digital Edition for review from NetGalley

RATING:    4 OUT OF 5 NUMMY NUM ALEX STARS!!!

Description from Goodreads:

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love

REVIEW:

Well I really enjoyed Delirium.  Admittedly I was a little hesitant as I had just finished reading Matched by Allie Condie and hadnt been overly impressed by it.  And to start, the similarities in the plot were very close.  Though the similarities in plot were there - the writing style and the overall "feel" of Delirium really captured me and I was easily drawn in to the world of a life without love - love being an illness - and the struggle for those who find it.

Lena (Magdalena) lives in a world where love is a disease and the cure is given once you turn 18.  She is a few months off her 18th birthday. The cure is just around the corner.......but then she meets Alex......and her world as she has always known it gets shaken up beyond her wildest dreams.

Lena has a best friend, Hana, who is a touch on the rebellious side and always willing to live outside her required square of life!  Lena sticks by the rules, not wanting to shake life up for herself whilst living with her Aunt Carol and cousins. Her own mother had succumbed to the amor deliria nervosa (delirium) disease and had apparently taken her own life!

When Alex enters her world, she fights against her emotions, the rules and many around her.  Can she survive the disease long enough to get the cure? Or will it take hold and change her world forever?

Delirium was packed with action, suspense, forbidden love and a whole new look at a loveless society. The dystopian genre has certainly come out in full force and Delirium certainly packed a few good POW's - and of course an ending that leaves you hanging and wanting more.

ENJOY!

MARISSA

BOOK REVIEW - DELIRIUM by LAUREN OLIVER - DELIRIUM # 1

By : Lauren Oliver
Published By : Harper Teen
Release Date : 1st February 2011
Details : Ebook , 305 Pages Adobe Digital Reader

RATING :  5 ANXIOUS ALEX STARS!!

Book Blurb : Taken From Goodreads

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love - the deliria - blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.


But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable........
 
BOOK REVIEW :
 
Firstly a big thankyou to Netgalley for this advanced read, much appreciated.
 
CHARACTERS:
 
Magdalena Haloway - Lena is 95 days away from being 'cured'. She will be 18.
 
Hana - Bff to Lena
 
Grace 6yrs old and Jenny 9 years old - Lena's cousin's children.
 
Rachel - Lena's older sister, needs a good slap.
 
Aunt Carol - Also in need of a good slap.
 
Alex - Gorgeous male lead with golden brown hair.
 
I had the best time reading 'Delirium', a  'dystopian' genre book.
( refer bottom of review for meaning of dystopian genre)

WOW!!! What an awesome, tense, exciting, nail biting read.
 What an interesting concept to come up with. Love is a disease, 'amor deliria nervosa'.

I am very excited for Lauren Oliver and this book. I highly recommend the read , the first in a trilogy.

I can so see this book as an exciting movie. Lauren writes with such clarity, visually , so easy to see the scenes. My heart was pounding on several occasions. I can not wait for book # 2 , 'Pandemonium'.


The ending to 'Delirium' , nearly killed me, in a good way, well kinda , it did nearly kill me..lol!! There were several scenes where I was literally holding my breath, reading, waiting ....... hoping. I want to talk about the story , but I just can't. There is too much to give away. If you feel unsure of the first couple chapters, where it's all going, just keep reading and the book blossoms into this emotional , rollercoaster ride. I loved Hana and the connection she had with Lena. Hana's daring personality shows Lena how to live a little, before the 'cure', slowly awakening within her thoughts that she should not be having. Sometimes I did want to give Lena a good shake. Then you realise as the reader, it's easy to want to snap somebody out of their brainwashed  mind, but living in that kinda society, is all about brainwashing the masses. It's only the more free thinking individuals that become anti , hence the 'resistance', is formed.


Rules....are meant to be broken.




FAVE QUOTES:


"Everyone is asleep. They've been asleep for years. You seemed... awake." Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again.
"I'm tired of sleeping."


For a while we stay there in silence. Alex rubs circles on my shoulders, arms and knees - anywhere he can reach, really, like he's desperate to maintain physical contact with me. I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind.


"I love you. Remember. They cannot take it."






Following blurb taken from Lauren's page:


Fox 2000 has optioned the rights to Lauren Oliver's New York Times bestselling young adult debut novel Before I Fall. This is Oliver's second novel to be optioned for film, after her upcoming January 2011 release, Delirium, was picked up in June.



http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com/

Dystopian meaning,  taken from Wikipedia:



A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-: bad-, ill- and Ancient Greek: τόπος: place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and how humans individually and collectively cope with technology that has evolved too quickly. A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty and brutal political controls such as a large military-like police.

Michelle