A Thousand Words A Million Books || A Young Adult Book Blog: OfficialPlaylist

HII! And WELCOME BACK to Meet The Authors! Since February (when the last Meet The Authors Was), I've had a ton of submissions, a whole set of semester finals and two sets of mid terms, I worked at an advertising agency for a month and went out of the country on vacation. It's been a LOT and I only just had time last month to contact some AMAZING Authors for a week long Meet The Authors feature.

There are a few giveaways coming up over the next week along with some BRILLIANT authors who've agreed to come onto my blog, and I do hope you all have fun (virtually) meeting them and get to know a little more about them and their books!

For day one, please do welcome the WONDERFULLY TALENTED Debut Author, Karen McManus who wrote the YA Mysters, One Of Us Is Lying.

Music is an essential part of writing for me. While I was drafting One of Us Is Lying, I used certain songs to get into the overall mood of the book, and—probably more importantly—into the minds of the characters. Now that the book is out in the world, I feel a twinge of nostalgia every I hear one of “my” songs, because they remind me of that intense drafting period when the Bayview Four were living inside my head.

If you’re interested in what that was like, here’s a sampling from the One of Us Is Lying playlist:

1. Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds. This one’s pretty obvious, since The Breakfast Club was the original inspiration for the book. Also, the lyrics “Going to take you apart/I’ll put us back together at heart” sum up one of the book’s major themes.

2. Kids by MGMT. There’s a scene in the book when a clip of the four main characters set to this song goes viral. People have asked me why I picked this song, and it’s basically because I could picture it. Four kids accused of murder walking in slo-mo against the backdrop of trippy music with dark undertones just felt right.

3. Stitches by Sean Mendes is Addy’s heartbreak song. Addy’s an interesting character; you’re not meant to like her at the beginning, and most people don’t. But she couldn’t transform the way she did without going through everything this song represents, and realizing she’s better off on the other side. (Side note: this song was in constant rotation while I was drafting in fall 2015, and to this day when it comes on the radio in our car my son yells, “Addy’s song!”)

4. Maybe I’m Right by Pete Yorn. This is Cooper’s song, and for this one, the lyrics don’t really matter. It’s more the yearning, searching tone of the music that got to me while I was writing.

5. Secrets by One Republic was Simon’s song, which is probably self-explanatory.

6. Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick. I had this song on constant repeat when I wrote scenes with Nate and Bronwyn. Bronwyn even borrows part of a lyric at one point to describe Nate.

7. First, by Cold War Kids. This applied to all the main characters, particularly these lines: “There comes a time/In a short life/Turn it around, get a rewrite/Call it a dark, night of the soul/Ticking of clocks, gravity’s pull”.

Karen M. McManus earned her BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and her MA in journalism from Northeastern University. Her debut young adult novel, ONE OF US IS LYING, will be released from Delacorte Press/Random House on May 30, 2017. It will also be published internationally in 18 territories including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia.

To learn more visit www.karenmcmanus.com, or follow @writerkmc on Twitter.

Title: One Of Us Is Lying

Author: Karen McManus

Publication Date: May 30th 2017

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone

I Got A Copy Through: eARC from Random House via NetGalley (THANK YOU!)

Buy Links: Amazon IN || Amazon US || Amazon UK || Barnes and Noble || The Book Depository || Wordery || Foyles || Waterstones || WHSmith || Kobo || Books A Million || Chapters Indigo || Google Books

Blurb Description: One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.
Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Title: What Happens Now

Author: Jennifer Castle
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: June 7th 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Mental Illness

Synopsis: "I know what it is to want something so badly, you feel like your cells aren’t properly bonded together without it.
I also know what it’s like to get that something.
And honestly, I’m still not sure which is worse..."
Ari Logan is battling to win her war against depression and the dark night she hurt herself on purpose. It’s not easy: her best friend is drifting away, her mom’s emotionally checked out, and she spends her days playing caregiver to her handful of a half-sister, Danielle. But it’s summer, and anything is possible...
That’s when Camden Armstrong steps onto the beach of Ari’s local swimming lake.
At first, Ari quietly longs for Camden from afar, seeing in him everything she wants to be. When the two discover a true connection the following summer, Ari lets herself fall not just for the quirky and self-assured Camden but also his friends, tumbling into their world of independence, adventure, and shared sci-fi fandom. As Ari’s romantic dreams come true, she must unlock the mysteries of the very real and troubled boy behind her infatuation, while also struggling with her own demons, obligations, and loyalties.
From the award-winning author of "The Beginning of After" and "You Look Different in Real Life," "What Happens Now" is a touching, insightful novel about learning to heal, learning to love, and what happens when fantasy becomes reality,

I "collected" these songs during the time I was writing What Happens Now. Each one of them inspired me or evoked the characters and story in some way.

Listen to The Official What Happens Now Playlist here

Follow the What Happens Now by Jennifer Castle Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

Jennifer Castle received her B.A. in Creative Writing at Brown University and worked as a celebrity publicist’s assistant, an advertising copywriter, and a struggling screenwriter (yes, that’s an actual job) before falling into a niche producing websites for kids and teens. Her debut, THE BEGINNING OF AFTER, was a 2012 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection as well as a Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best" book. YOU LOOK DIFFERENT IN REAL LIFE and its companion digital novella, PLAYING KEIRA, were published by HarperTeen in June 2013. Her next novel, WHAT HAPPENS NOW, is forthcoming from Harper in June 2016. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and daughters.