Wednesday, June 18, 2014

End Times Blog Tour: Q+A and Giveaway


Today I have the pleasure of being part of the promotional tour for End Times by Anna Schumacher, and Anna is here to briefly talk about the hardest and easiest scenes for her to write. The incredibly generous team at Penguin has also offered up a finished copy of End Times to one lucky winner, so be sure and check the bottom of the post for all those details. Welcome to Supernatural Snark Anna!


WHAT WAS THE HARDEST SCENE TO WRITE? THE EASIEST?

Unlike Daphne, Janie was a very easy character for me to wrap my head around. Her contradictions make so much sense to me: she’s poor but spoiled, self-centered yet generous, a bad girl who thinks she’s a good girl. Because of this, Janie’s scenes were both the hardest and the easiest for me to write.

Janie undergoes a pretty rough personal journey in the first book, and since I love Janie so much it was hard for me to write about bad things happening to her. At one point my husband came home to find my sobbing into my laptop. That was the hardest scene to write. The easiest was a scene that happens later in the book – I can’t say too much, because spoilers! But I woke up in the middle of the night knowing exactly how the scene needed to go, and I sat down and wrote the whole thing in about an hour. It just flowed out of me. Then I went back to bed.

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END TIMES


When life gets too tough to bear in Detroit, Daphne flees to her Uncle Floyd’s home, where she believes she’ll find solace in the silent hills of her childhood summers. But Daphne’s Greyhound bus pulls over in downtown Carbon County and it’s not silence that welcomes her. It’s the sound of trumpets.

Daphne’s desire to start again in simple country comfort is instantly dashed as the townsfolk declare that the End Times are here. And incredible occurrences soon support their belief. Daphne does all she can to keep her head down and ignore the signs. She works a job at the local oil rig, helps around the house, hangs out with her pregnant cousin Janie and gets to know Owen, a mysterious motocross racer and fellow roustabout at the rig. But soon a startling discovery shatters her resolve and calls into question all her doubts and fears.


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ANNA SCHUMACHER


Anna Schumacher received an MFA in fiction writing from The New School. Born and raised in the tiny town of Guilford, VT (no traffic lights, no post office, one store), she now lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two cats. END TIMES is her first novel.


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GIVEAWAY

Thanks to the team at Penguin, I have one finished copy of End Times to give away on the blog today! To enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Giveaway is open to US addresses only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

20 comments:

  1. ATLAS STRUGGED by Ayn Rand :)

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  2. The Rot and Ruin series by Jonathan Maberry, or the Dustlands saga, or even The Ashes Trilogy by Ilsa J. Bick

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  3. Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld!

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  4. My favorite dystopian book is Ready Player One.

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  5. I'm a huge fan of dystopians and postapocalyptic books and this sounds very much super interesting since it seems like it's the starting point and not the regular dystopian of the world after the catastrophe!

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    2. Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted to do with this series - start BEFORE the apocalypse, and have the series follow it from the beginning and well into the aftermath. It's so great when it turns out that readers also want what I want!

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  6. Divergent :) Thanks for sharing!

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  7. I'm a big fan of The Hunger Games, but who isn't? Thanks

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  8. Evolution and the Chemical Garden Trilogy. I also love The Hunger Games as well.

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  9. The Legend Trilogy by Marie Lu is the one that made me cry when reading all three books.

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  10. Ooh, love that your subconscious was working on your story even while you were asleep and then was kind enough to wake you up for a full scene! I usually fall back asleep before writing anything down then have morning regrets. *sigh*

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    1. Thanks Mary! That wide-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing is actually a side effect of wine. If I drink more than a glass with dinner, it wakes me up with a foggy head and pounding heart in the middle of the night, and takes me at least an hour to fall back asleep.

      I've learned to roll with it (because - give up wine? The horror!), which sometimes results in late-night writing spurts (and sleepy mornings).

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  11. There are so many dystopian books that I love. The Hunger Games is probably my fave though.

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  12. I love that authors really care for their characters and really don't want to put them through the ringer any more than we sometimes want to read about it.

    I loved this guest post!

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  13. I have this book on my shelf just begging to be read. I need to get to it!

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  14. So hard t name just one. I think I would have to say that I love Wither. I didn't care for the sequels, but the first book blew me away!
    Thanks for the giveaway!

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  15. This cover is so eye-catching! I love it!! Thanks for sharing. :)

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  16. My favorite dystopian book is The Hunger Games.

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