Release Day Blitz: Shadow Reaper by Amos Cassidy

Really looking forward to reading Shadow Reaper by Amos Cassidy, so it's great to be taking part in today's release day blitz for it!

Summary:

Only the bravest go over the Horizon...

Twenty years ago the barriers between worlds came down and our reality was swallowed up by the Shadowlands. Now we scavenge to survive, until one day there’s nothing left to reap. Starvation is around the corner, but I’m not the roll over and wait-to-die kinda girl. Nope, I’m going further than anyone has ever been and returned to tell the tale. I’m going into the Beyond, and I’m not coming back without a solution.

Dark urban fantasy with a post-apocalyptic twist.

Information about the Book

Title: Shadow Reaper

Author: Amos Cassidy

Release Date: 13^th September 2016

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Kindle Press

Format: Ebook

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31701886-shadow-reaper

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01IWKRJFS

Author Information

Amos Cassidy is the pen name for Richard Amos and Debbie Cassidy. Amos is a 31 year old Diva and Cassidy a 39 year old mother of three; well, four if you include the husband. A common love of all things Joss Whedon, Urban Fantasy, and a tug of war over Jensen Ackles, brought them together, and one cold February afternoon, over nibbles and coffee, their partnership was born. 

You can find Cassidy hard at work in her fortress of solitude which has eaten up the majority of her garden, and Amos...well he's still trying to get the invisibility gizmo he got off a friendly alien in exchange for a pair of earphones to work. Funnily enough he hasn't been seen around much lately...

Frequent doses of sugary snacks, coupled with regular injections of caffeine aid in their production of a unique brand of cross genre tales. They are always writing, but are happy to take a break to chat to their wonderful readers, so drop them a line at amoscassidy@yahoo.co.uk, or just pop over to see what they're working on at amoscassidyauthor.com and they'll bust out the biscuit tin.

Website: www.amoscassidyauthor.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/amoscassidy

 

YA Shot Blog Tour: Jane Hardstaff on Feeling Your Way

I'm looking forward to the upcoming YA Shot festival,  so I'm really happy to be on the blog tour today hosting Jane Hardstaff, author of fabulous MG historical novels The Executioner's Daughter and River Daughter!

Two years ago when The Executioner’s Daughter was published, I worried about labels. I worried that being part of a genre – historical fiction – would somehow define me and my fledgling book. I worried that even the word ‘historical’ would be a massive turn off, sending children scuttling round the corner to the Wimpy Kid aisle. Because to a lot of young readers historical has a classroom feel to it, in a way that adventure or fantasy or funny doesn’t. 

Yet historical fiction can engage and compel as much as any other genre. 



There are so many exceptional voices in historical fiction: Sally Gardner, Elizabeth Wein, Emma Carroll and Frances Hardinge, whose startling, sinuous thriller The Lie Tree won the Costa Book of the Year. Or Morris Gleitzman, whose novel Once, about a boy trying to make sense of the cruelty of grown-ups in Nazi-occupied Poland, makes you laugh, then breaks your heart.

It’s so obvious now I think about it, but somehow I hadn’t thought. The historical novels I love are not so much about ‘bringing a period to life’, as reaching through time, finding connections and resonance with our lives today. The history is there, seeping through the skin of the story, but these writers have some other gift for turning an idea into a living, breathing thing.

What is it? What is this gift that makes those books so special?

Hilary Mantel said this:
‘To write historical fiction, you need to have more than an intellectual knowledge, you need to have that emotional punch behind everything you do. So one tries in a way, to recover that childlike sensibility.’

It’s an exciting thought. The childlike sensibility. The ability to be absorbed without over-thinking. To unthink, perhaps. To feel your way.

So now I don’t lose sleep over definitions. I love this genre that I’m part of, with all its diversity and richness and characters that can reach through time. As a writer, when I set sail at the beginning of a story, it’s the emotional truth that I am looking for. I hope I can recover enough of that childlike sensibility to find it.