White Chalk #Book #blitz and #Giveaway

WHITE CHALK by Pavarti K. Tyler coming July 22, 2013

Literary Fiction/Coming of Age Novel with a brave look at teenage life, containing some strong adult themes to generate honest and frank conversation.

WHITE CHALK

About the Book

Chelle isn’t a typical 13-year-old girl—she doesn’t laugh with friends, play sports, or hang out at the mall after school. Instead, she navigates a world well beyond her years.

Life in Dawson, ND spins on as she grasps at people, pleading for someone to save her—to return her to the simple childhood of unicorns on her bedroom wall and stories on her father’s knee.

When Troy Christiansen walks into her life, Chelle is desperate to believe his arrival will be her salvation. So much so, she forgets to save herself. After experiencing a tragedy at school, her world begins to crack, causing a deeper scar in her already fragile psyche.

Follow Chelle’s twisted tale of modern adolescence, as she travels down the rabbit hole into a reality none of us wants to admit actually exists.

• Publisher: Evolved Publishing
• Publication Date: July 22, 2013
• Genre: Literary Fiction
• SubGenre: Coming of Age
• Audience: Adult
• Pages: 250

Excerpt from White Chalk:

Class oozed by. The assignment proved easy, but waiting for the inevitable knock on the door, or ring of the teacher’s phone, made the seconds expand exponentially. By the end of the period, I’d half convinced myself I should just go to the office and surrender, admit everything that happened and beg for leniency.

When the bell rang and the frenzy began to herd ourselves into the cattle drives called hallways, I had mostly regained control of myself. Except I never realized that the computer room was in the same hallway as high school English, and I didn’t know that Xiu and Troy were in the same class for fourth period. I certainly didn’t have any clue about what greeted me when I walked out of my classroom.

Xiu leaned against the wall, its puce green tile doing nothing to diminish her exotic beauty. A languid smile played on the corners of her lips as she tilted her head up, listening to whatever perfectly fascinating thing Troy said.

He had one hand on the wall next to her head, his backpack dangling without fear from his shoulder. He reached up with his other hand and grazed her cheek with the back of his fingers.

Her deep red lips parted in anticipation. Soft almond eyes drifted closed as she stretched her neck to meet his incoming kiss. His hair, pulled back in a dark stripe along the top of his head, shone in the florescent light as he took her lips in his.

I dropped my bag and stumbled back, almost tripping over it. I fell along the linoleum floor until my back leaned against the cool tile. Speckles of light shone in my eyes, while bile rose in my throat and a wrenching aching heartbreak shook through me, threatening to knock me down and steal my kidneys, selling them on the black market. They weren’t any good to me anymore. Who needs kidneys when your heart’s been removed with a grapefruit spoon?

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White Chalk (Evolved Publishing) marks Tyler’s third full length novel and promises readers familiar with her work the same mind bending experience.  Her other projects include: Shadow on the Wall (Fighting Monkey Press) and Two Moons of Sera (Fighting Monkey Press).  Shadow on the Wall has been received many awards: Winner of the General Fiction/Novel Category of the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Winner in the Fiction: Multicultural category for The 2012 USA Best Book Awards, and Finalist in the Multicultural Fiction category for the 2012 International Book Awards.

White Chalk has been hailed as “brave”, “raw”, and “destroyingly beautiful”.  In line with novels such as White Oleander, Thirteen Reasons Why and Gemma, White Chalk invites you to witness one girl’s heartrending story of confusion and desperation.

Award winning author of multi-cultural and transgressive literature, Pavarti K Tyler is an artist, wife, mother and number cruncher. She graduated Smith College in 1999 with a degree in Theatre. After graduation, she moved to New York, where she worked as a Dramaturge, Assistant Director and Production Manager on productions both on and off Broadway. Later, Pavarti went to work in the finance industry several international law firms. She now lives with her husband, two daughters and one very large, very terrible dog. She keeps busy working with fabulous authors as the Director of Marketing at Novel Publicity and penning her next genre bending novel.

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The Age of Miracles

I read Karen Thompson Walker's book, The Age of Miracles, while I was away on vacation last week. Once I started reading, it was really hard to stop. I love apocalyptic books, and this one is so grounded in reality - sixth grade reality - that it makes the horror of what is happening much more compelling. 

Julia is eleven, an age that is puts her between two worlds - childhood and adolescence. She worries about her friendships, longs after Seth, a boy at the bustop, and is tortured by a bully. These very real fears and longings are played against the backdrop of a world that has started to unwind. For some reason, Earth's rotation begins to slow down, so that nights gain thirty minutes and days last for forty hours. 

There are many reactions: some people are convinced that it is the end of the world and gather in religious sects, such as Julia's best friend, Hanna. Others insist on following "clock time" - getting up in the dark, sticking to a 24 hour schedule. Another sect wants to follow new time - staying in during the dark, waking at the strange new dawn. The two groups clash, as humans always seem to do, and one is driven off to the desert to live their new schedule.

The birds begin to die. Crops fail. The sun burns with a new intensity.

And Julia is changed by all of this, but her changing relationships matter more. Her parents begin to grow distant to each other. Hanna moves away with her family. And her proximity to Seth becomes more intense - in many different ways.

Image courtesy of Housatonic Museum of Art

Walker writes with a slow style that mirrors the new revolutions of the planet. Don't think that means that there is any lack of excitement, however. I was sucked in from the start, wanting to find out more about Seth and what would happen to Julia. 

She also continually surprised me, with new concepts and ways of describing unimaginable events. For example:

Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things; the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and the swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.

And, on the micro scale of the revolutions within Julia's emotions, Walker is just as powerful:

"It's not fair to your mom," he aid. "I hate things that aren't fair."
I nodded. "Me, too."
We said nothing else, but the secret buzzed between us. It felt good to have told. It felt good to be known by this boy. 

I loved the story on both levels: the story of a young girl, and the sci fi nature of the background. I highly recommend this book.