young adult Archives - Lisa Manterfield

June 19, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 2 Comments

A Sneak Peek of The Smallest Thing

My new novel, The Smallest Thing, comes out on July 18^th.

It’s the story of Em, a young woman on the brink of embarking on her new life, who finds herself trapped in a dull English village by a government-imposed quarantine. It’s a story of “self-sacrifice, the power of human touch, and the need to act in the face of horror,” writes Catherine Linka, author of A Girl Called Fearless, who was kind enough to do an early review of the book.

If you’d like a sneak peek, hop over to the book’s page and read the first three chapters of Em’s story.

If you want to keep reading, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until July 18^th, but the good news is, you can pre-order a copy now, so you won’t have to wait too long.

To find out more about the real-life village that inspired this book, take a look at this post.

And if you’d like to join me to celebrate the book’s release, I’m throwing a Publication Party at {pages}: a bookstore in Manhattan Beach on Tuesday, July 18^th at 7pm. I’ll be signing, reading, and—most likely—eating cake. Hope to see you there.

April 24, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 2 Comments

Author Love: An Interview with Farah Oomerbhoy

This week I’m very pleased to welcome Farah Oomerbhoy to the blog. Farah is celebrating the publication of the second book in The Avalonia Chronicles series. The Rise of the Dawnstar is out today. I chatted with her about family, inspiration, and writing heroic female characters.

1. Avalonia was inspired by a tapestry that hung on your grandmother’s wall, and themes of family and belonging run through your books. How has your own experience with family shaped your stories?

That’s a very good question. I didn’t think anyone has ever asked me that before. 🙂

All authors draw from life experiences to form the basis of a story. But after a character starts coming to life everything changes. My books are no different; influences from my childhood and family life do tend to find their way into my work. But eventually, the characters and the story find their own path.

As a child, I had an almost perfect life, until the day my parents divorced and my father married again. I was seven years old.

I had always lived in a big joint family, with my parents, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. But when my father left I started to realize that life was not always fair.

In a way, Aurora’s life at the very beginning mirrors that feeling of having a charmed life, until the day you realize that nothing will ever be the same again.

When I first imagined Aurora, I started to question what life would be like without the support of a close-knit family unit. How would a person cope, what would they become, would they be strong enough to survive on their own.

Writing Aurora’s story is a way of exploring these questions.

Her journey is not only one of external discovery but an internal struggle to find a sense of belonging, of self-worth. To find the happiness that was wrenched away from her at a very young age. The family that she is reunited with through the book, Aunt Serena, Uncle Gabriel, Erien, her grandmother, etc. are all parts of her once perfect life that she is trying to piece together again.

Aurora learns through trials and mistakes that life is not always fair, but you don’t have to do it on your own. Even a hero can ask for help sometimes. No one is perfect and if you have family and people who care about you, it gives you a strength that you never thought was possible.

All her life she thought she was alone, that no one really cared about her until she comes to Avalonia and realizes the importance of family and duty and finds a sense of belonging she never had before.

2. You wrote in an interview once that you loved fantasy stories, such as The Lord of the Rings, as a child, but would be frustrated that the girls never got to do anything. How did you balance writing a strong, heroic female character like Aurora with maintaining her femininity?

It was hard at first achieving this balance. I wanted my main character to be one whom young teenage girls could relate to. But at the same time I wanted her to be strong-willed, capable, and someone whom they could look up to as well.

Even though Aurora may have magical powers and trains to be a warrior; her likes and dislikes, her naiveté at times and even her infatuation with Rafe, reminds us that she is still, in essence, an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl. She ends up making mistakes and gets into trouble just like a regular teenage girl would. She didn’t grow up as a warrior so her feminine side is quite ingrained in her character.

I wanted readers to see that to be a hero and a warrior, a girl doesn’t have to dress up as a man or give up who she really is inside. She is perfectly capable of being feminine and a hero at the same time.

3. The Rise of the Dawnstar is the second book in your Avalonia Chronicles. When you wrote The Last of the Firedrakes, did you know it would be the first book in a series or was it originally just a stand-alone story you were burning to tell?

When I first imagined Avalonia I did not think I could even write one book, let alone a whole series, but I decided to give it a try.

At first, it was just a standalone book, called Aurora Firedrake. Until I realized that Aurora’s story would take a while to tell. So once I was halfway through The Last of the Firedrakes, I decided this would be a trilogy, and I named it The Avalonia Chronicles.

4. How are you like Aurora? How are you not at all like her?

Aurora could be a sixteen-year-old version of myself, but at the same time, she is not me.

One of the main concepts of the story is that Aurora could be anyone; that at any point in time it could be you who could open a cupboard, enter a library, or step into a tapestry and be transported to a magical world.

Aurora is an ordinary girl trying to make sense of an extraordinary life. She’s the girl next door, someone you wouldn’t believe could ever be a princess or a warrior.

Everyone has within them the potential for greatness, but it is the choices we make and the standards we live by that shape our character and help us grow into our true abilities.

That is what makes an ordinary person a queen.

5. Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?

Book 3 😉

The Rise of the Dawnstar,
book two of The Avalonia Chronicles.

Aurora Firedrake returns in the spellbinding sequel to The Last of the Firedrakes.

The seven kingdoms of Avalonia are crumbling and evil is spreading across the land like a plague. Queen Morgana is close to finding a way to open The Book of Abraxas and it’s only a matter of time until she uses the power trapped inside its pages to enslave the entire world.

With Avalonia growing more dangerous by the day, Aurora must travel through war-torn lands and deep into the heart of the fae kingdom of Elfi. Her goal is to find a legendary weapon infused with the last of the realm’s ancient magic—the only weapon in the world powerful enough to stop the queen.

Aurora might have survived her first battle against Morgana, but the true fight to save her kingdom and restore her throne has only just begun…

Available On

About the Author

Farah Oomerbhoy is the international bestselling author of The Avalonia Chronicles. Her first book, The Last of the Firedrakes, was originally published on Wattpad where it gained over two million reads and a Watty Award. Since publication, her debut has gone on to win a silver medal in IBPA’s Benjamin Franklin Awards and the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, along with winning a finalist placement in the USA Best Book Awards. Farah loves the fantastical and magical and often dreams of living in Narnia, Neverland, or the Enchanted Forest. With a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Mumbai, Farah spends her creative time crafting magical worlds for young adults. She lives with her family in Mumbai, India.

Giveaway!

For each stop on tour, there will be a special number at the end of the post. Collect all the numbers, add them up, and enter to win one of three prizes! Once you have all the numbers you can enter the giveaway here: http://farahoomerbhoy.com/rise-dawnstar-now/

The giveaway closes on May 21st, 11:59pm Eastern US time.

My number is 9.

Good luck!

March 20, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

How J. K. Rowling, Daisy Ridley, and Andrew Garfield Helped Me Write “A Strange Companion”

When I’m writing, I like to “see” my story. I tape a big piece of brown paper to my office wall and cover it with post-it notes of story lines, scene ideas, and nuggets of information I don’t want to forget, along with pictures of settings in which the story takes place.

Once I have a solid feel for the characters I’m creating, I add their photos, too. Sometimes I look for pictures of actors who might play the character and sometimes I look for people who just feel right. When I choose a picture, it’s often less about the way the person looks and more about the personality traits that the photo suggests.

If you’ve been reading A Strange Companion, maybe you’ve already formed images of your own about what the characters look like. I don’t want to ruin that because one of the wonderful things about books is that you get to cast the roles in your own imagination. So, if you prefer to keep it that way, don’t read any further. However, if you’re curious to see what was in my head—and on my storyboard—read on:

Kat:

To me, Kat is very down-to-earth. She loves climbing and the outdoors and she’s not big on fashion or make-up, but she’s still very feminine. Even though she’s going through a rough time in the story and doesn’t always make the best decisions, ultimately, she is tough and smart, and very determined. This photo of Daisy Ridley, not in her scruffy Star Wars garb, is the perfect representation of Kat.

Owen:

Oh, Owen. I do have a soft spot for this character. Although it was very tempting to cast Chris Hemsworth or Aiden Turner as Kat’s love interest (okay, those are my choices, not hers, I admit it) Owen is more the roguish boy-next-door type. He’s kind and funny, handsome, but not with the sort of moody good looks you’d trip over yourself to look at. (Is that just me, too?) Although Owen is loosely based on someone I knew, when I saw this loveable shot of Andrew Garfield, I chose it for my character board.

Gabe:

In the book, Kat describes Gabe as “beautiful.” In her memories, he is perfect in every way. I needed someone sultry, but cool, with the sort of moody good looks I talked about earlier, but in a younger, boyish package. Kat was a teenager when she and Gabe met, so I needed someone that 16-year-old Kat would find attractive. Nicholas Hoult has a boyish sexiness and seemed like someone Kat might have fallen for.

Mum:

Kat’s mother, Helen, is a young widow in her early 50’s, making a fresh start with a new man (much to Kat’s consternation.) I describe her as blonde when we first meet her at the airport, and I imagined to her to be attractive and well put together, but also down-to-earth, like Kat. It took me a while to find the perfect image and, finally, I came across this picture of J. K. Rowling. To me, she looks the part of Kat’s mum and I could imagine her being very pragmatic with Kat and also letting loose and having fun with Brian.

What do you think? Does your vision of these characters match mine? If not, who would you cast to play your favorite roles?

July 22, 2016 - Lisa Manterfield 5 Comments

I’m Scared, So I Know I’m Onto Something Good

ASC-Front-med — Behold! The gorgeous cover of my new book.

There’s a school of thought that says: When you start to feel afraid of taking a leap or making a change, that’s when you know you’re making the right decision. I’m choosing to subscribe to this school of thought this week, because I’m starting to feel nervous about an upcoming leap of faith.

A couple of months ago I had a brilliant idea. You know the kind I mean. It came to me in an instant and I immediately wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. I began thinking about this idea all the time and planning out how it would work. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a really great idea. So, I told a couple of people and they thought it was a good idea. So I told a couple more. And before I knew it, I was committed.

Then this week, things started to get real. The pieces of my plan began clicking into place, money changed hands, and I passed the point of no return, or at least the point of no return without humiliation. Suddenly, I was really nervous.

All the reasons why this was the best idea I’ve ever had suddenly got a little fuzzy at the edges. I woke up in the night with a list of all the things that could go wrong, all the reasons why this was a stupid idea, and I knew I had to make a decision. I could:

Call the whole thing off, cut my losses, and go back to my old safe, but ineffective, way of doing things.
Put it off a couple more weeks, give myself some time to firm up a few more details and mitigate some of the potential disasters.
Pinch my nose, close my eyes, and leap in feet first, hoping that I’d figured out quickly how to swim.

I’ll admit that all these options looked good, but finally, I made a decision. The only way I would ever truly know if this was the best idea since sliced bread was to commit and go for it.

So, here goes…

Next week, Wednesday July 27, I will launch my new serialized novel, A Strange Companion. I will publish a new chapter of the novel every single week until I get to “The End”, sometime in early 2017.

I’ve never done anything like this before and honestly, it goes against all my beliefs about how to go about publishing a book. I’m afraid it won’t be good enough. I’m afraid people won’t like it. I’m afraid I’ll get to Chapter 5 or 10 or 20 and realize I started in the wrong place or that there’s an important character or set-up that really needed to appear in Chapter 7.

Regardless, I’m doing it.

If you want to find out a bit more about this story, go to the book’s spiffy new web page. You can also subscribe so I can land in your inbox next week and bring with me Chapter One of A Strange Companion.

See you then!

July 15, 2016 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

A Campfire Story for Your Younger Self

Campfire Since we humans first began gathering into social and familial groups, we’ve used stories to create a sense of community. Early hunter-gatherers shared tales to pass along information, traditions, and important lessons.

In this fascinating Life Science article, Campfire Tales Served as Early Human Social Media, researchers noticed a big difference between daytime and nighttime campfire stories told among a tribe of Kalahari Bushmen. While the daytime conversations were made up of only 6 percent stories, the rest being complaints, gossip, hunting plans, and jokes, once the tribe gathered around the nighttime campfires, 81 percent of conversations were stories.

The stories passed along information about tribal customs and ceremonies, as well as warnings of dangers, such as the story of three bushmen killed in a fire. The tribe also used stories to pass information to younger generations.

Modern Stories

Even today, we find our way around in the world and understand who we are through handed down stories. I heard stories about my aunt who emigrated to Australia by boat in the 1940s, which helped me understand why I seemed to be the only person in my family to move far from home. I recently learned that my habit of dragging my husband on long, under-prepared hikes comes not from my dad, as I’d always believed, but from my mum, who had the same habit.

As a child, I learned about the dangers of electrocution, of hot cooking oil, of crossing the street, not from formal lessons, but from stories told by others. More recently, my social media feed has bombarded me with a million things to worry about, everything from terrorist attacks to falling off a cliff while playing Pokémon Go.

From my own writing, I’ve discovered I am not alone in my experiences and I’ve come to a deeper understand of myself. Even when I make up stories in my fiction, I often find myself digging into into my own past and learning about myself from the way my characters behave. It’s one of the many wonders and pleasures of telling stories.

As you think about the stories in your life, what important wisdom would you pass along if you had the chance to sit around the campfire with your younger self?

The Rise of the Dawnstar, book two of The Avalonia Chronicles.