Guest Post from Author David Estes (Ice Country) +Giveaway

Ice Country (The Country Saga #2)
by David Estes.

Book Synopsis

Dazz, a hard-edged, fun-loving Icer, likes fighting, particularly while at his favorite watering hole. However, while recovering from a particularly bad break up, his decision to engage in a brutal pubroom brawl leads to a series of events that thrust him into a dark and mysterious scandal involving King Goff, the ice country ruler.

When his seven-year-old sister is abducted in the dark of night, Dazz pledges to do whatever it takes to get her back, embarking on a quest that threatens to rip apart the very fabric that's barely holding his shattered family together.
Along the way he meets a group of unlikely allies in the form of a travelling group of fire country natives. Can Dazz, when joined with his best friend, Buff, and new tan-skinned friends, defeat the King and his guards before it's too late for his sister?





PRAISE FOR "ICE COUNTRY":
-"5 stars! David Estes creates captivating and original worlds that you love to get lost in!" Alexandria Theodosopoulos- Goodreads
-"Richly filled with new characters and story without leaving the old behind...a seamless transition into another side of a fantastic world." Kerri Hughes- Goodreads

Quick Facts

Release Date: April 4th,2013.

Genre: YA Dystopian.

Formats Available for Purchase: Paperback (only at Amazon) Kindle, epub and Smashwords.

An Author Guest Post!

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Ideas and Inspiration- One Author’s Perspective

By David Estes (Proud to be an Indie!)

We’ve all heard stories of authors who wake up frantic, in the middle of the night, the crisp edges of a dream fading, getting fuzzy quicker than they can grab a pencil and paper, or their iPhone, or wherever they like to take notes about potential books they’d like to write. Or perhaps they see someone or something, and suddenly the idea hits them so hard they feel dizzy, as plots and characters charge through their thoughts unbridled, their stories begging to be told. Those are definitely awesome ways to come up with ideas and inspiration for your next book.

Well, unfortunately, none of that has ever happened to me, although sometimes I wish it would! For years and years I wanted to write a book, but the ideas just never came. I never had the next Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. Nothing worthy of being printed and bound and read by millions of readers. So I didn’t write. I couldn’t write. Not until I had my big idea.

As it turns out, that big life-changing idea never came for me. It wasn’t until I was between jobs in 2010 that my wife, Adele, said enough was enough, that I needed to stop talking about writing a book and just do it. Forget about big ideas and divine inspiration, she said, just write a book about the first idea that pops into your head. I stewed for a while, telling myself I couldn’t do that—and that writing wasn’t that easy.

But then I did just that. I started writing a book using the first idea that popped into my head. I’d read a few angel/demon books at the time, and I noticed that people seemed to like them, myself included, except most of them had religious undertones and focused on heaven and hell and fallen angels. So I chose angels and demons, but with a different spin: the angels were bad, the demons were good, and both groups were evolved from humans rather than fallen from heaven or raised from hell. Angel Evolution was born!

Really, however, that was just the spark, the tip of the literary iceberg so to speak. Because what I found was that my ideas and inspiration come from the very act of writing itself. Rarely am I walking down the street, or sitting somewhere, or dreaming, and then come up with an awesome book idea. Instead, it’s when I’m writing one book that I come up with a decent idea for another one. In other words, it seems that creativity breeds more creativity. At least for me it does.

One example of this was when I was writing The Dwellers Saga. I’d already written and published The Moon Dwellers, which was doing quite well and had finally put me on the Indie map, allowing me to start writing fulltime, which I was ecstatic about. I was hard at work on the sequel, The Star Dwellers, when it hit me. An idea for a completely different book, with different characters, plots, and even setting, that would eventually tie into The Dwellers Saga. Six months later, I’ve published the two Dwellers sequels, as well as the first two books in the series that was spawned by that “Aha!” moment while writing The Star Dwellers. The two books are called Fire Country and Ice Country, the second of which is the subject of the blog tour that this guest post is a part of. I’ve also written the third book in The Country Saga, which will be released on June 6^th of this year. All because I allowed my mind to roam a little while doing the thing I love: writing!

That’s just one example though. There are numerous others, more than 20 new book ideas, many of which have series potential, all typed into my iPhone or laptop, many of which may never be written. But at least I have a list so whenever I finish my current project or series, I can consult the list and pick the idea that happens to speak to me the loudest at that point in time. Because of that there will be no shortage of books coming from me in the future.

We may not all be writers, but we all have creativity. Whether you like to draw, write book reviews or poetry, or tell jokes, you have imagination and inventiveness inside of you. Where do you get your ideas and inspiration? Are you like the people in the first paragraph of this post, who dream or have muses, or are you like me, generating creativity from artistic pursuits? Or do you get your inspiration from something else entirely? I’d love to know! Please leave a comment and tell the world!

A special thanks to Lisa for allowing me on her blog, for giving me an awesome guest post subject, and for all her work to make this blog so fun! I love getting comments and messages from my readers, so feel free to contact me using any one of my social networking handles provided in this post. I promise to respond to each and every person who contacts me! And as always, HAPPY READING!

David Estes

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Excerpt

It all starts with a girl. Nay, more like a witch. An evil witch, disguised as a young seventeen-year-old princess, complete with a cute button nose, full red lips, long dark eyelashes, and deep, mesmerizing baby blues. Not a real, magic-wielding witch, but a witch just the same.
Oh yah, and a really good throwing arm. “Get out!” she screams, flinging yet another ceramic vase in my general direction.
I duck and it rebounds off the wall, not shattering until it hits the shiny marble floor. Thousands of vase-crumbles crunch under my feet as I scramble for the door. I fling it open and slip through, slamming it hard behind me. Just in time, too, as I hear the thud of something heavy on the other side. Evidently she’s taken to throwing something new, maybe boots or perhaps herself.
Luckily, her father’s not home, or he’d probably be throwing things too. After all, he warned his daughter about Brown District boys.
Taking a deep breath, I cringe as a spout of obscenities shrieks through the painted-red door and whirls around my head, stinging me in a dozen places. You’d think I was the one who ran around with a four-toed eighteen-year-old womanizer named LaRoy. (That’s LaRoy with a “La”, as he likes to say.) As it turns out, I think LaRoy has softer hands than she does.
As I slink away from the witch’s upscale residence licking my wounds, I try to figure out where the chill I went wrong. Despite her constant insults, narrow-mindedness, and niggling reminders of how I am nothing more than a lazy, liquid-ice-drinking, no-good scoundrel, I think I managed to treat her pretty well. I was faithful, always there for her—not once was I employed while courting her—and known on occasion to show up at her door with gifts, like snowflake flowers or frosty delights from Gobbler’s Bakery down the road. She said the flowers made her feel inadequate, on account of them being too beautiful—as if there was such a thing—and the frosty’s, well, she said I gave them to her to make her fat.
She was my first ever girlfriend from the White District. I should’ve listened to my best friend, Buff, when he said it would end in disaster.

The Author:

David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. He grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife and soul mate, Adele, who he’s now been happily married to for more than two years.
A reader all his life, David began writing novels for the children's and YA markets in 2010, and has completed 14 novels, 12 of which have been published. In June of 2012, David became a fulltime writer and is now travelling the world with Adele while he writes books, and she writes and takes photographs.
David gleans inspiration from all sorts of crazy places, like watching random people do entertaining things, dreams (which he jots copious notes about immediately after waking up), and even from thin air sometimes!
David’s a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, an obsessive Goodreads group member, and prefers writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table. He loves responding to e-mails, Facebook messages, Tweets, blog comments, and Goodreads comments from his readers, all of whom he considers to be his friends.

Learn more about the author at: http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

Tour Giveaway

Tour Wide giveaway: 5 e-copies of "Fire Country" (The Country Saga #1) and 2 e-copies of "Ice Country" (The Country Saga #2).
Rules:

• There will be 7 winners.
• The giveaway is open internationally.
• Winners have 48hs to claim their prize since the moment they receive the email.
• Do not cheat! :P

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Remember to check BOOK 1 in "The Country Saga": Fire Country.

Synopsis:

In a changed world where the sky bleeds red, winter is hotter than hell and full of sandstorms, and summer's even hotter with raging fires that roam the desert-like country, the Heaters manage to survive, barely. 

Due to toxic air, life expectancies are so low the only way the tribe can survive is by forcing women to procreate when they turn sixteen and every three years thereafter. It is their duty as Bearers.

Fifteen-year-old Siena is a Youngling, soon to be a Bearer, when she starts hearing rumors of another tribe of all women, called the Wild Ones. They are known to kidnap Youngling girls before the Call, the ceremony in which Bearers are given a husband with whom to bear children with. 

As the desert sands run out on her life's hourglass, Siena must uncover the truth about the Wild Ones while untangling the web of lies and deceit her father has masterfully spun.

AMAZON

SMASHWORDS

FOLLOW THE TOUR:

April 4:

Teen Blurb: Promo.
The Cover Contessa: Review.
Witchy contessa: Review.
Bookaroo- Ju: Promo.
I read and Tell: Guest Post.
Fandom Fanatic: Promo.
Julia Baby Jen's Reading Room: Promo.
Ohana Day Academy: Promo.
Mythical Books: Promo.
Sab The Book Eater: Promo.
Author Roxanne Kade: Promo.

A Goddess of Literature: Review.

Librarian's Pick: Promo.

2013 Bring Out the New Me: Promo.

Me, you and my Shelf: Promo.

I am a reader not a Writer: Promo.

April 5:

Lola's Reviews: Review.
Mallory Heart Reviews: Promo.
Recent Reads: Promo.

Kahlolily's Reads: Promo.

Fundimental: Promo.

My Own Stuff: Promo.

Books, Books and More Books: Promo.

Kimberly Lewis Novels: Promo.

I know that Book: Interview and Promo.

April 6:

Happy Indulgence: Interview.

Bookworm Lisa: Guest Post.

Laurie's Thoughts and Reviews: Promo.

Vanilla Moon: Promo.

Second Book to the Right: Promo.

That Girl Reads: Promo.

Think Books: Promo

Renee's Library: Promo

Happy Tails and Tales: Review.

Sapphyria's Book Reviews: Promo.

April 7:

Words to Dreams: Review and Guest Post.

Bunny's Review: Guest Post.

The Stuff of Success; Promo.

My Devotional Thoughts: Promo.