Five Authors and the Five Books that Inspire Them –
Five by Five, May 7th – 11th:
Due to unfortunate, unforeseen, and totally understandable circumstances, the author originally scheduled for today, was unable to contribute. So, I decided it would be a great opportunity to introduce you to a new author. I was lucky enough to get the wonderful Jes Young to step in and save the day!
Jes Young is a former copyeditor who decided to leave the publishing world for a bit in order to be a full-time mom. She is back with a vengeance now that her debut novel, Tab Bennett and the Inbetween, has been released. A dark fairy tale, it is the first in a new UF series called “Princess of Twilight and Dawn.” I read a small short on her website and I am excited to get my hands on the full-length novel. Read the synopsis. You’ll want to get your hands on it, too. It looks to be a great start to a new world and heroine.
Without further ado…Jes Young!
5 Books that Inspire Me
Jessamy by Barbara Sleigh
Jessamy is the first book I ever loved. It’s about a girl who is transported back to 1914 every time she enters the schoolroom of the old house where she spends summers with her Aunt. It’s a book about wonder and magic and mystery and it unlocked my eight year old brain and filled it up with stories.
The Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole
For some reason I can’t fully explain, Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series is like writing fuel to me. Reading them never fails to inspire me to write. Maybe because every book is just the right combination of funny and sexy and sad. Demon from the Dark is my favorite because of quotes like this:
“He’d swiftly collected those monsters’ heads, tying them together with a piece of the rope she’d hoped never to see again, then strung them over his shoulder. Periodically, he offered his catch to her.
“No, no, I have a pair just like them at home,” she’d said. “I would just regift them.”
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Still Life with Woodpecker is just so full of words. No. Not words. Language. Of beautiful, thick sentences that go on and on. It’s convoluted and silly and a little bit dirty. It’s about true love and redheads and bomb making. And every time I read it I end up wishing I was the one who wrote it.
A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton
Before I read A Kiss of Shadows, there was hardly any magic in Tab Bennett and the Inbetween. This book and the others that followed in the Merry Gentry series made me think about magic and sex and menace in a way I hadn’t before. This is where my urban fantasy education really began.
Darkfever and the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning
Urban fantasy is populated by kick-ass heroines; women with long hair and high heels who literally fight monsters for a living. Leather pants are practically a genre-wide epidemic. For me the thing that sets Darkfever and the rest of this series apart is that Mac, the main character, is exactly the opposite of that. At the beginning she’s innocent and sweet and very, very pink. Over the course of the series she fights, she fails, she kills, and she dies. She loses everything and from the pieces she builds someone tough and sleek and strong. Darkfever taught me that a cream puff can become a tough cookie with the proper motivation – something I was definitely inspired by when I was writing Tab Bennett and the Inbetween.
What books are my characters reading?
Tab would be really interested in Fifty Shades of Grey right now. I think she’d find Ana’s struggle between acquiescence and rebellion easy to relate to; Tab’s got a lot of strong-willed, over protective men around her too.
Robbin has Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson on his nightstand but I don’t think he’s much of a reader. It’s probably been sitting there for a long time.
Alex is reading Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.
What’s up next for Jes?
Book #2 of the Princess of Twilight and Dawn series!
Tab Bennett and the Underneath will be out in December. Unlike Inbetween, which was a talking book, its sequel, Underneath, is an adventure. There’s a dark forest to cross, a dungeon to escape, and bad guys to vanquish. It’s been incredibly fun to write.
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Go get your copy of Tab Bennett and the Inbetween here.
And, please, stop by and say hello to Jes at some of her favorite spots:
WEBSITE | TWITTER | GOODREADS | GOOGLE+
Now, enter for your chance to win an ebook copy of “Tab Bennett and the Inbetween” along with ONE book of choice from Jes’s top five list!
