YA Indie Carnival | Back to School

Welcome back to the YA INDIE CARNIVAL!!!

We are in our 10th week, and super excited to have you with us today!

Today’s Main Attraction:

Back to School Stories

So back to school stories… hmm.  Looking back, I feel like my high school career was rather nondescript — pretty boring if you get right down to it.  Nothing exciting… nothing like what you read about in all of these YA books happened to me.  That’s right folks, no brooding, sparkly vampires fell in love with me. I didn’t find out I was a half-angel with a destiny to save the world.  I also didn’t find myself the object of a faerie king’s obsession.   Downright… boring.

Despite my lack of paranormal high school activity, there was one small experience from senior year that has stuck with me  that had an impact on my genre choices as an adult reader.  Right before my senior year began, I moved.  Moved to a different school district, a smaller school district, where the senior class was one of those who had been together since Kindergarten.  Fun right?  Anyway, I found myself in the middle of an English class preparing to read The Great Gatsby for what felt like the millionth time.  Now while I enjoy Nick, Daisy, Jay and their sordid little tale of woe, I had no desire to read it AGAIN for class, and do yet more papers on what the green light and dentistry billboards meant to the larger themes of the book.  I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but at some point I mentioned this to my teacher and she immediately  suggested an independent assignment for me instead.

“How about Jane Eyre?” she asked.

Being an Austen fan, and never having read any Bronte to this point, I literally jumped at the chance, and soon found myself immersed in the strange gothic world of strong, independently-minded Jane and the slightly twisted yet compelling Mr. Rochester.  It was weird, it was creepy, it was romantic, it was unlike anything I had ever read… and I wanted more.

Unfortunately, because I have a horrible memory and am so very bad with names, I no longer remember the name of that particular teacher.  But I’m grateful to her for broadening my literary horizons and introducing me to Bronte.  So thank you, Mrs. Senior Year English Teacher, thank you.

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So you might want to know the results from last week’s giveaway?  Maybe?  Well, my contribution to the giveaway pot was the Kindle copies of both Filter and PineLight… and those winners are…

For more back-to-the-books stories visit my fellow carnies!  And look!  There are a few new faces that have joined up this week!

• Fisher Amelie (Author of The Understorey)
• K. C. Blake (Author of Vampire Rules)
• J.L. Bryan (Author of the Paranormals series)
• Heather Cashman (Author of Perception)
• Courtney Cole (Author of The Bloodstone Saga, Princess & Guardian)
• Rachel Coles (Author of Diary of a Duct Tape Zombie and other stories)
• Laura Elliott (Author of Winnemucca)
• Wren Emerson (Author of I Wish…)
• T. R. Graves (Author of The Warrior series)
• P.J. Hoover (Author of Solstice)
• Kimberly Kinrade (Author of Bits of You, Pieces of Me and Forbidden Mind)
• Patti Larsen (Author of the short story, Henry and the newly released Run)
• Michelle Leighton (Author of the Blood Like Poison series, The Reaping, Wiccan, Caterpillar, and the upcoming Madly series)
• Lexus Luke (Author of Manitou and The Sky People Saga)
• Amy Maurer Jones (Author of The Soul Quest Trilogy)
• Alicia McCalla (Author of the upcoming debut novel Breaking Free)
• Cheri Schmidt (Author of the Fateful series and Fair Maiden)
• Dani Snell (You are here. Book Blogger)
• Cidney Swanson (Author of Rippler)
• Cyndi Tefft (Author of Between)
• Suzy Turner (Author of December Moon and Raven)
• Nicole Williams (Author of Eternal Eden and the much anticipated sequel, Fallen Eden)
• Gwenn Wright (Author of Filter)