Lisa Manterfield

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October 1, 2018 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

Hunt for Your Next Great YA Read

The Young Adult Scavenger Hunt (YASH) starts tomorrow. Are you ready? This year 120 of your favorite YA authors will be offering copies of their books as prizes, along with top secret bonus material, such as deleted scenes, related short stories, cover reveals, and more.

I’m on the GOLD Team, where I’ll be giving away copies of The Smallest Thing and offering up the very first look at the cover and first chapter of my forthcoming book, Thicker Than Water. You definitely won’t want to miss this.

If you’ve never hunted before, you can find out more about it on the YASH website, or check back here October 2nd at 12pm for all the details and the first clue in the GOLD team hunt.

See you then!

Lisa

Filed Under: Author Love, Book Love, Cool Stuff for Book Nerds Tagged With: books, fiction, giveaway, Scavenger Hunt, YA, YASH, young adult Leave a Comment

July 9, 2018 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

A Tour of my Character Graveyard

A Tour of my Character Graveyard by Lisa Manterfield - lisamanterfield.com

The road to a finished book is littered with discarded characters. As subplots are cut and the main character’s story is streamlined, some characters no longer serve a purpose in the book and are bid farewell.

In an earlier version of A Strange Companion, Kat had a second brother. He was the Golden Child with the perfect family, who could do no wrong in Kat’s mother’s eyes. But he and his family didn’t serve the story, so they were cut and Jon inherited some of his former brother’s traits.

In another draft, Kat sought spiritual counsel from an elderly Chinese woman who had strange mystical powers and operated from a dusty old shop on a backstreet. She was a wonderful character, but I needed Kat to get more pragmatic advice and a bump back down to reality, and so Marjorie Gladstone took over the role.

One of my favorite characters, now residing in the character graveyard, is Victoria, Kat’s classmate and a potential rival for Owen’s affections, or so Kat believed. In fact, Victoria, with her huge purple glasses and plummy private school speech, was an innocent, completely oblivious to the effect she had on men. But after the “watch incident” and Kat and Owen’s break-up, Kat went to Owen’s dorm room to apologize, only to find Victoria sitting cross-legged on Owen’s bed, supposedly getting help with her chemistry homework. Although nothing ever transpired between Owen and Victoria, she raised the stakes for Kat, showing that Owen had other options if Kat didn’t get her act together.

Victoria was part of a storyline that would have thrown Kat and Owen together at a conference later in the book and forced them to decide if they had a future together. But alas, the conference would have taken Kat away from Mai and the main storyline of the book, and so it—and Victoria—bit the literary dust.

I do miss Victoria and many of the characters and scenes that didn’t make the cut. But I’ve kept all their scenes, and maybe they’ll make a comeback in another story. Who knows?

Filed Under: The Story Behind the Story Tagged With: A Strange Companion, Author, young adult Leave a Comment

October 30, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction by Lisa Manterfield -lisamanterfield.com

In A Strange Companion, a lot of peculiar things happen around Kat. Another character in another story might have chalked up all these signs as coincidence, and then maybe I’d be writing a romance novel about a girl who falls for a guy who bakes a wicked chocolate hazelnut marble cake (*see below for more about this). But that’s not this story. This story is full of strange coincidences that may or may not prove that Gabe is back.

A while back, I wrote a post about some of the weird things that happen when you’re dealing with grief. If you’ve ever lost someone you love, you’ll know that nothing is beyond the realm of possibility as you try to come to terms with someone being gone.

There’s always a danger of crossing a line in fiction and making coincidences unbelievable. I mean really, what are the odds of Mai calling Kat by the pet name Gabe gave her, or having a birthmark in the exact same spot as his? But while I was editing the book, I got a sign of my own that weird coincidences happen in real life, not just in fiction.

On my office wall, I have Plot Planner, a long sheet of brown paper where I keep track of my novel and its various storylines. I like to gather pictures as I write, images of how I see the characters and some of the settings. It helps to get the story clear in my head.

I found the perfect picture of Mai, cut it out, and stuck it on my story board. It wasn’t until weeks later that I took a close look at the picture and realized that the dress the little girl is wearing is made from identical fabric to my living room curtains!

Is this a weird coincidence or a sign of something else? I’ll leave you to decide.

* Owen’s chocolate hazelnut marble cake was a big hit with Kat and it was an equally big hit with Mr. Fab when I tried it out on him. If you’d like to get the recipe to make your own, plus recipes for five other dishes mention in A Strange Companion (including Kat’s mother’s prawn cocktail and Jon’s blackberry lavender scones) I’ll send you a free recipe book (plus a collection of short stories) when you sign up for my newsletter.

Filed Under: The Story Behind the Story Tagged With: A Strange Companion, Author, book, books, fiction, loss, love, novel, paranormal, reincarnation, YA, young adult Leave a Comment

October 9, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

Grab “The Smallest Thing” for Under a Buck (or a Quid or a Loonie)

Grab “The Smallest Thing” for Under a Buck (or a Quid or a Loonie) by Lisa Manterfield - lisamanterfield.com

If you haven’t snagged yourself a copy of The Smallest Thing yet, now’s your chance.

This week only, it’s on super duper wahoo sale. Yup, you can download a copy for less than the cost of a convenience store Styrofoam cup of artificial pumpkin-flavored coffee. I mean, really, which would you rather have?

So, click on your bookseller of choice, make yourself a proper cup of coffee (or tea) and settle in for a juicy read.

Nook

Still not convinced? Here are what reviewers have to say:

“Lisa Manterfield’s richly detailed novel…is graced with themes of self-sacrifice, the power of human touch, and the need to act in the face of horror.”
~ Catherine Linka, author of A Girl Called Fearless


“It grabbed my attention from the start and held it to the end. The detail in this story is simply chilling.”
~Amazon reviewer


“Tense thriller. Transcends the YA genre.”
~Amazon reviewer


“Lisa Manterfield is one brilliant author.
The Smallest Thing will stay with me for many years to come.”
~Amazon reviewer

And I swear, none of these reviews were written by my mum!

So, linger no longer. The offer is only good for a week.

Nook

Filed Under: The Writing Life Tagged With: Author, book, books, deal, The Smallest Thing, YA, young adult Leave a Comment

September 25, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 2 Comments

If You Love YA, You Won’t Want to Miss This

If you love discovering new authors, you won’t want to miss the YA Scavenger Hunt.

In case you’ve never heard of it, the hunt showcases 140 new and upcoming YA releases. There are tons of prizes, including individual giveaways and seven Grand Prizes, plus each author will release special bonus material, only for hunt participants. Sound interesting?

This fall the hunt features seven teams of twenty. I’ll be participating on the Orange Team.

The blog hop begins Tuesday, Oct 3rd and runs through Sunday, Oct 8th. It’s easy to play. All you have to do is either check in here on October 3rd, or head directly over to the YASH website. There you’ll find a list of all the authors participating as well as an answer sheet you can print off to gather the info you’re hunting for and to keep track of any bonus contests you may have entered.

I’ll have all the details here next week, but for now, here are all the books featured this season, so you can start looking for your favorites:

Filed Under: Cool Stuff for Book Nerds Tagged With: Author, books, fiction, giveaway, YA, YA Scavenger Hunt, YASH, young adult 2 Comments

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