Monday, March 11, 2013

Blog Tour Stop: Sacred by Elana K. Arnold: Guest Post and Spotlight


Welcome to my stop on the Sacred blog tour.  This tour is hosted by JeanBookNerd.  My stop includes a guest post  with Elana K. Arnold and a spotlight as well.  To follow the tour, click here.


Title: Sacred
Author: Elana K. Arnold
Publisher:  Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Publication: November13th, 2012
Pages: 368 

Synopsis
 


Growing up on Catalina Island, off the California coast, Scarlett Wenderoth has led a fairly isolated life. After her brother dies, her isolation deepens as she withdraws into herself, shutting out her friends and boyfriend. Her parents, shattered by their own sorrow, fail to notice Scarlett's pain and sudden alarming thinness. Scarlett finds pleasure only on her horse, escaping to the heart of the island on long, solitary rides. One day, as she races around a bend, Scarlett is startled by a boy who raises his hand in warning and says one word: "Stop."

The boy—intense, beautiful—is Will Cohen, a newcomer to the island. For reasons he can't or won't explain, he's drawn to Scarlett and feels compelled to keep her safe. To keep her from wasting away. His meddling irritates Scarlett, though she can't deny her attraction to him. As their relationship blossoms into love, Scarlett's body slowly awakens at Will's touch. But just when her grief begins to ebb, she makes a startling discovery about Will, a discovery he's been grappling with himself. A discovery that threatens to force them apart. And if it does, Scarlett fears she will unravel all over again.


Guest Post with Elana K Arnold


(“What fiction most influenced your childhood, and what effect did those stories have on Sacred?”)
 
All my life I’ve read everything I come across, hungrily and indiscriminately. As a pre-teen I had a particular taste for fiction—I loved historical bodice rippers, and I loved Agatha Christie. Especially I loved the “other-time-ness” of these books—the damp old Anglo Saxon castles, the heaths of England, the social niceties (with rippling undercurrents) around afternoon tea parties.

            I loved that plot mattered, and (in the best of these books), character did, too. But the sensation of place—though I didn’t notice at the time how important that was, it resonated with me and reappeared in my own writing, in Sacred, in Scarlett’s island home and her family’s Victorian-era Bed and Breakfast in the small village of Avalon. The way the island reflects the tone of the book—and Scarlett’s sadness—is a reflection of the impact all those books had on me.
            And the romance of them—not just romance in the way we think of it today, with soul-deep yearning and at-last kisses (though Sacred has much of that, too), but romance in its classic sense, with the incorporation of the marvelous, chivalric love, and a web of stories—not just the protagonist’s—this worked its way into Sacred, as well.
            As a teenager I fell in love with Fitzgerald; I loved the gilded quality of his writing, the opulence of some of his characters—both their material wealth and their richness of living, their giantness of character. Scarlett’s best friend Lily Adams is a girl of this tradition, and her family home is the Catalina Island version of Gatsby’s mansion, in a way.
            In college I stumbled onto magical realism. I was fortunate enough to earn a scholarship to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and my housemate was Aimee Bender, who was just beginning the Fiction program at UC Irvine. Each evening we read stories aloud around the dinner table, and I fell into the web she wove and left hungry for more. I think some elements of that genre—of seeking out the magical among the mundane—infuses Sacred, as well.  


Upcoming releases by Elana K Arnold

 
Ben: Having just graduated from high school, Ben is set to leave Gypsum, Nevada. It's good timing since the gypsum mine that is the lifeblood of the area is closing, shutting the whole town down with it. Ben is lucky: he's headed to San Diego, where he's got a track scholarship at the University of California. But his best friends, Pete and Hog Boy, don't have college to look forward to, so to make them happy, Ben goes with them to check out the hot chick parked on the side of Highway 447. 


Lala: She and her Gypsy family earn money by telling fortunes. Some customers choose Tarot cards; others have their palms read. The thousands of people attending the nearby Burning Man festival spend lots of cash--especially as Lala gives uncanny readings. But lately Lala's been questioning whether there might be more to life than her upcoming arranged marriage. And the day she reads Ben's cards is the day that everything changes for her. . . and for him.

 

 


The passionate romance that began in Sacred concludes in Splendor.

Scarlett loves the touch of her boyfriend, Will. But when he leaves Catalina Island to start college on the East Coast, she wonders whether their passion can survive a long-distance relationship—and whether she can face the home front on her own. Scarlett's senior year should be a breeze, but her parents have recently separated, and her already-wild best friend, Lily, is becoming involved with a dangerous boy named Gunner . . . a boy Scarlett is also attracted to. A boy she doesn't want to be—and shouldn't be—attracted to.

To take her mind off her troubles, Scarlett focuses on caring for her newly pregnant mare and delving deeper into the Kabbalah. Her religious exploration offers a way to stay connected to Will, who is a Kabbalah mystic, and a key to understanding her disturbing dreams about him. But as she gets wrapped up in her mare, her Kabbalah studies, and her conflicting feelings for Will and Gunner, Scarlett misses the warning signs that lead to a heartbreaking loss. 



 


ELANA K. ARNOLD completed her M.A. in Creative Writing/Fiction at the University of California, Davis. She grew up in Southern California, where she was lucky enough to have her own horse--a gorgeous mare named Rainbow--and a family who let her read as many books as she wanted. She lives in Long Beach, California, with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of animals. She is represented by Rubin Pfeffer of the East/West Literary Agency. Sacred is her debut novel.

LINKS:



Giveaway!!!!
Click on this link to enter!!!!!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/e849f7483/


 

1 comment: