New Cover Reveal: STAINED

On October 1, 2013, 

  STAINED 

the newest young adult novel

 from author Cheryl Rainfield 

and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

will be released.  

Cheryl Rainfield,

author of the Scars, Hunted and Parallel Visions

brings readers another compelling read

STAINED

Sometimes you have to be your own hero

The book's tag-line should be the mantra for Sarah, who is targeted for abduction because of her facial port-wine stain and must find a way to rescue herself.

  
EXCERPT
With a new book cover and a new release date, I thought it would be a great idea to share a bit more about Cheryl Rainfield's upcoming YA book, STAINED, including this excerpt (p. 2):

Today is the day I’ve been waiting for my entire life—the beginning of normal.

I reach for the latest Seventeen and flip through its glossy pages until I find the perfect face. The girl is pretty, with wide green eyes, hollow cheekbones, and full, pouty lips. But what I notice most is her smooth, unblemished skin. It’s perfect. I cut the photo out and stick it above my bed, in the last of the space. Now I can’t even see the sunlight yellow of my walls—but the confidence that shines in these faces is even brighter. And today I’m going to get so much closer to that. I don’t care how much the treatments hurt; it’ll be worth it. It can’t hurt as much as the stares and rude comments I get every day.

I know I shouldn’t let people’s ignorance get to me. Mom’s always telling me I’m beautiful; that it’s what’s inside that counts. But she’s not living in the real world. Sure, whether you’re kind or good matters. But pretty people automatically get better treatment. Ugly people get ignored ... if they’re lucky. And me, I get stares, taunts, or people going out of their way to pretend they don’t see me.

I try to think of it as fuel for my comic scripts. All heroes have to go through personal trauma before they find their true strength—and most of them feel like outsiders even after they do.

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Here's what others are saying about STAINED:

"Powerful. I raced through it, wanting to know if Sarah would find a way to escape both her captor and her self-doubts. A real nail-biter!"

- April Henry, NY Times-best selling author of The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

"A compelling, gutting, and ultimately triumphant read. You won't want to stop turning pages -- Or blink. Or breathe. -- until you reach the very last one."

-Jennifer Brown, award-winning author of Hate List

"STAINED is dark, tense and gripping; a triumph of one girl's heart, soul and will to survive. Sarah's strength during her descent into terror kept me reading way past bedtime!"

-Laura Wiess, critically acclaimed author of Such a Pretty Girl

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VIDEOS

Today, Cheryl Rainfield uploaded a YouTube video about writing STAINED. It is a thoughtful sharing about her own experiences and the courage and strength she found to help her survive and escape abuse.

Uploaded on June 18, 2013 by Cheryl Rainfield on YouTube 

at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miLDs9HfBcI 

And, if you missed it in January, this is the book trailer that she uploaded before the cover and release date had been change.

Uploaded on January 21, 2013 by Cheryl Rainfield on YouTube 
at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr0a8pw-csQ

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FREEBIES and CONTEST

To celebrate this cover reveal, Cheryl will be giving away her YA paranormal fantasy, Parallel Visions, as a free Kindle ebook on Amazon, today only.

And she'll be holding a contest on her website http://cherylrainfield.com/blog/ for a signed advanced reading copy of STAINED (old cover), gift card and great book swag (including purple wristbands with the tagline for the book).

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So time to mark your calendar:

 October 1, 2013

 for

STAINED

by Cheryl Rainfield

Young adult suspense is just a few months away

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Parallel Visions: A Teen Psychic Novel, Book 1

by Cheryl Rainfield
Rain and Sun Press
ASIN: B00A8763K6
146 pp.
Ages 13+
2012

Having your breath taken away by something incredibly beautiful or by love seems so serene and captivating. But when Kate, 16, loses her breath regularly because of her severe asthma, it is a life-threatening, fear-inducing situation.  She knows she could die when her body reacts to cigarette smoke, pollution, perfumes, aerosols, hair products and such, but she is especially disturbed by the visions she has when she has a severe episode.  Worse yet is that no one seems to believe her about what she sees in her visions, usually horrific events that was destined to happen.  Sharing those visions just brings confusion, suspicion, interrogations. and overwhelming despair for what she cannot change.  Her parents try to be supportive but they're obviously pulling back from believing her.  Her older sister Jenna, married right out of high school, may be close to Kate but she too doesn't accept Kate's visions as reality. 

This is especially problematic when Kate has a vision of Jenna's husband, Mason, beating her up.  More surprising is that during that same asthmatic attack, Kate also has a vision of a girl attempting suicide. Although she doesn't know the girl exactly, Kate knows she is connected to Gil, the boy to whom she was speaking when the attack came on. Kate's biggest fear at this point is wondering how she can help save both of them when she has already failed to save a single person.

Fortunately, Gil believes her when she tells him about her vision, as his Nana is a medium.  He confirms that his older sister, Inez, has been having a hard time with their mom leaving last year but Kate also knows the girl has been harassed by other students for acknowledging her homosexuality.  He goes home to check on Inez and later confirms with Kate that Inez had been contemplating taking an overdose but was now talking to him and their Nana, and hoping to meet Kate.

Things don't go so well for Kate at her sister's apartment. Jenna, who still feels animosity towards her sister for getting the greater share of her parents' attention and preventing her from enjoying many teenage-girl accoutrements (e.g., makeup, perfumes, etc.), denies that Mason has ever hit her.  But, when Kate spies a framed photograph, minus the glass, that she had seen get broken during Mason's beating of Jenna, Kate is convinced that Jenna is lying.  Sadly, their parents don't believe Kate either.

With the number of severe asthma attacks escalating, perhaps due to her own desire for clarifying visions, Kate continues to have horrifying images of Mason trying to discredit Kate by talking to a doctor, of Mason murdering Jenna and of Mason spying on his wife through her cell phone.  Gil, her only support, insists Kate let him accompany her or she text him as needed and introduces her to his Nana and sister, who confirm that her visions are real and offer their love and support.

Author Cheryl Rainfield is no stranger to trauma, identifying herself as a survivor of horrifying abuse.  But the focus for her characters is not on the trauma but on the survival -- to retain a sense of self while finding the physical and emotional strength and courage to endure and recover.  Regardless of her sister's denials, Mason's arrogance and aggression, her parents' lack of support, and her debilitating asthma, Kate perseveres, even knowing that her physical and emotional struggles could lead to her own death.  Ensuring the survival of another is what drives her, and ultimately she must find the means to do the same for herself.  And even though there will never be a fairy tale ending when the likes of abusers such as Mason are present, Parallel Visions' resolution is satisfying, hopeful and encouraging that the abuse is not the whole story.  

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Special Announcement!
Check back tomorrow as I'll be revealing the new cover of Cheryl Rainfield's upcoming release, STAINED.  To celebrate, she'll be giving away tomorrow only Parallel Visions as a free Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Once Upon a Northern Night

by Jean E. Pendziwol

Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-138-0

36 pp.

Ages 4-7

August, 2013

Think of those cold Canadian winter nights, when the fallen snow has us cocooned inside and a quiet stillness blankets the land.  A confetti of snow flakes drift beyond the windows, mounding on branches, railings, and the hidden promises of spring.  If you can place yourself in this divine winter scene and know of a child with whom you may share this, Once Upon a Northern Night will be a lovely addition to your lullaby collection.

I may be reviewing this in June, and it may be the hot summer of August when Once Upon a Northern Night will be released by Groundwood Books, but those are only dates and seasons.  Jean E. Pendziwol's text will transport you beyond a calendar to a darkened night lit by falling snow, taking a path through the pines and birches, sprinkled with flakes, to a garden and frozen apples.  You'll see the deer, owl, hares, fox and mouse but never hear them as their scampers and play are buffered by the snow.  And the glimmering sky of colours and shapes!  Perfection needs no other words.  And Isabelle Arsenault's gentle and reassuring drawings lighten the night-time fears of darkness and warm the winter's cold, creating a soft shelter of wonder and innocence, life and love.  No meditation or relaxation exercise could ever bring the serenity and adoration the infuses Once Upon a Northern Night, soothing all readers, young and old alike.

Every Never After

by Lesley Livingston

Razorbill

978-0-14-318208-5

242 pp.

Ages 12+

2013

Since curses are the order of the day in Every Never After, and in its prequel Once Every Never (Puffin, 2011), I would like to serve up my own.  OK, not really but Lesley Livingston: Why? Why? Why? Why would you drop readers cliffside, or at least Glastonbury Tor-side, with the last four sentences of your newest book?  And no respite until when? 2014? Not fair!

Now that I've got my Mercer-esque rant out, I can surprisingly and honestly inform the reader that I was so captivated by Every Never After, and every nuance of every interaction between familiar and new characters, that I was devastated by its ending.  So, if Lesley Livingston had not created yet another fantasy of such richness and emotional quality, I would not have yelled out, "NO!" upon reading those last words.  So, Lesley Livingston, it's your fault.

Wow.  That rant does seem to go on, doesn't it?  

Every Never After begins shortly after Once Every Never (reviewed here) resolves itself with 17-year-old Clare Reid's successful return from her "shimmering" time slip into the first century AD when Boudicca, Queen of the British Iceni tribe, fought the advances of the Romans.  Now, Clare and her best friend, Allie McAllister, have been accepted to help out on an archaeological dig at Glastonbury Tor, a distinctive hill with known historical significance and claims of faery and Arthurian connections.  Along with the other "trowel monkeys" excavating under the direction of Dr. Nicky Ashbourne, the girls will be recording a video blog of their work. And Allie's cousin, Milo McAllister, who Clare is dating, is joining them to put his computer and mapping skills to work developing a virtual dig-site app for the museum. 

Clare's relationship with Milo is making Allie feel a bit like a third-wheel so she is happy to continue working one day when Clare and Milo go off early for lunch.  Videotaping it on her iPad for the blog, Allie excavates a skull and disappears in a flashes and waves of darkness and colours before dropping into the midst of violent clashes between Roman cavalry soldiers and berserking Druidesses.  Though rescued by a Roman legionnaire, Marcus Donatus, Allie is manacled and kept with the other prisoners until her status is clarified and her fate determined by the ailing Praefect Postumus.  And who should she discover in the prisoners' tent but Stuart Morholt, the same "ass-hat" who'd grabbed the torc from Clare (in Once Every Never), resulting in his deliverance to the first century AD.

Meanwhile, once realizing that Allie has disappeared by some very unlike "shimmering" episode, Clare and Milo are desperate to locate her.  Destiny has them making the acquaintance of Piper Gimble, snidely nicknamed Goggles by Clare.  Piper is in possession of a family "heirloom" that has been passed from generation to generation -- a tin box scratched with instructions from Stuart Morholt that it only be opened by Clarinet Reid.  Seems the pompous Stuart Morholt (yes, a man from the present) is an ancestor of Piper's having had a dalliance with Boudicca's sister centuries before he is/was actually born. 

(Temporally it might be difficult to keep straight what happened first and then what arose from that point. Maybe it's a chicken-egg argument.  Just remember: this is fantasy.  It doesn't have to make sense in our world.  Just believe that Lesley Livingston capably keeps the plot lines synced.)

Clare and Allie may have been sympathetic to the Celts whose land is/was being annexed violently by the Romans but, through the eyes of Marcus Donatus, Allie begins to see the Romans, or at least some of them, in a different light.  It seems Marcus Donatus is actually teen Mark O'Donnell who disappeared from Glastonbury Tor in the 1980's when Stuart Morholt and several of his devotees, including Clare's Aunt Maggie, performed some mystic ritual.  Twenty-five years may have passed in our world but it has only been four years in Marcus' new one.  And geeky Mark O'Donnell is/was now a hunky Roman legionnaire whose loyalty to Postumus and concern for Allie has her crushing on him. 

Confused yet?  Well, it's just the way I tell it, because from Lesley Livingston's pen, it is all handled beautifully.  The subplots of the two different time periods (or are there three?) merge courtesy of Clare and Milo's actions bringing them to the Roman camp of Allie's current circumstances. (OK, that's definitely an oxymoron.  How can the past be current?)  I won't tell you how it ends, though you might recall my earlier rant.  Suffice it to say that Every Never After climaxes with a maelstrom of ancient battles, romantic revelations, sacrifice, and mystic time-slips that will leave the reader reassured that Clare has accomplished her "mission" but, if the readers are anything like me, desperately awaiting the third book in the series, ever hopeful for a happy ending.

Summer Days, Starry Nights

by Vikki VanSickle
Scholastic Canada
978-1-4431-1991-7
219 pp.
Ages 10-14
June 2013

What a perfect time for Vikki VanSickle to launch her newest book, Summer Days, Starry Nights which takes middle grade readers to the lake, cabins and beach of Sandy Shores, the Starr family summer resort outside of Orillia, Ontario. The narrator of this 1962 coming-of-age story is the middle Starr child, Reenie, 13, who adores her home, the resort, but still doesn’t always feel like she belongs.  After all, her six-year-old sister, Scarlett, is so much like their mother, affectionately called Mimi, who likes pretty things and getting attention. Her brother Bo is 16 and, although he is obsessed with music and his band, the Wide Mouth Bass, he is still more likely to be asked to do work with his dad around the resort and will probably inherit it. But Reenie loves Sandy Shores. She can’t think of a better place to live or grow up.

So it’s perplexing to Reenie that Mimi becomes so melancholy about her past as a dancer and actress before she married and moved to the boondocks. And more surprising that Dad allows Mimi to implement a variety of ideas she has to bring a little class and hopefully more guests to the resort. In the summer of 1962, her idea is to bring in some entertainment and dancing, asking Gwendolyn, the daughter of her friend Grace Cates, to work for them. Gwen, almost 18, has grown up drastically from the lovely, ethereal girl attending ballet school who Reenie remembers; now she’s brash and more interested in singing than dance, especially not ballet, spending lots of time alone in her room when not teaching.

Reenie is determined to reacquaint herself with Gwen, hanging around her, taking dance lessons, talking about being a teenager. So it's not surprising that Reenie notices that, after Gwen gets letters from someone whose name begins with J or G, she is more grumpy and that there are times when it’s obvious she’s been crying. When Reenie is working in the office and answers a call from a rock and roller called Johnny Skins, looking to speak with Gwen, Reenie begins to hatch a plan that would bring some much-needed attention to Sandy Shores and lift her mother's mood; give her brother a chance to showcase his band and his music; and take away Gwen's blahs.  Reenie is convinced that she can pull together a special concert/dance and amaze everyone, especially Gwen, with a surprise appearance by Johnny Skins. But even plans laid upon the best of intentions will go awry when secrets are being kept by everyone.

The plot of Summer Days, Starry Nights draws attention to the sparkling promise of summer: new relationships, freedom, opportunities, spending time outdoors. But sometimes, like stars, that promise can be overwhelming, brighter than justified, blinding to the eyes. When the stars align, however, they paint a picture of a fragile family, held together by shimmering connections that waver, weakening and strengthening with different circumstances. With Gwen added to the big picture, all the Starrs begin to see themselves relative to her, moving within her pull, positive or negative, rather than as a stable system irrespective of her. But those pesky secrets shake the foundation of the Starrs forcing them to re-examine their ideas about themselves and each other so that they may rebuild those connections.

Characteristically, Vikki VanSickle pens a story that is like a classic rock-and-roll song: there is a familiarity to its melody, of a family working together, with harmonies and some dissonance (especially feared in the 1950's and 1960's music!) but together it is a pleasing sound that resonates with all.  Summer Days, Starry Nights is sure to be a summer hit on the youngCanLit charts.

Dying to Go Viral

by Sylvia McNicoll

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-271-9

251 pp.

Ages 12+

June, 2013

When fourteen-year-old Jade dies as a result of a skateboarding accident, dying becomes the least of her worries.  Nothing will undo that, no matter how much she chastizes herself about her carelessness and stupidity.  Let's face it: skateboarding without a helmet while hanging onto a car just so your eighteen-year-old crush can film it is pretty stupid.  And, like most stupid choices, there are unwanted consequences.  Jade's is her death.  But a lovely welcome from her mother on "the other side" has Jade wishing she hadn't caused so much more grief for her brother Devon and her dad and asking if she could return to the land of the living, just temporarily, to mitigate their guilt in her death.  Jade is given the opportunity to go back one week before her accident, and although she cannot change anything (it's that whole one-small-change-could-affect-all-history scenario), she can set things up so that her dad and brother accept no blame for her death.

But, when she returns just at the moment her best friend Scratch is about to attempt a grind on his skateboard which she knows will result in a broken wrist, Jade cannot help but try to step in.  Of course he still injures himself in a similar manoeuver but shortly after that and with more serious consequences, teaching Jade to heed her mother's advice that she shouldn't make any changes to the larger destiny.

"We can't know whether some change you make will drive destiny down a worse or a better path.  That's what makes reliving this week so dangerous." (pg.37)

So, Jade draws up a list of intentions, mostly centred on getting her dad a girlfriend and backing off on insisting Devon go to university (something he isn't at all interested in but willing to do but then quit), and allowing the three of them to spend more quality time together as a family.  But two things continue to thwart her plans:  Dad's workaholism with respect to his graphics company, and Devon's reluctance to interact with his father, knowing Dad just refuses to see Devon's perspective.  Luckily, her seven-day deadline puts enough impetus behind Jade to propel her into action.

By making casual suggestions, Jade is able to manipulate a few more family dinners, more discussions and appreciation of sunsets and such, even getting Dad to agree to attending the high school orientation BBQ with her and taking a day off work to spend a special day together with Devon and some friends.  Surprisingly, it's the changes in Jade's general outlook that have the greatest impact.  It's as if she can see the big picture while experiencing all the intimate details. Seeing Scratch's injuries as a parent might, watching their elderly cat Oreo as he deals with ravages of aging, appreciating her favourite dish, finally learning how to make fudge - Jade recognizes them for more than just what they appear to be.  Similarly, her one personal wish, to be kissed by Aiden, finally has her recognizing him as someone who looks to her, and everyone else, simply as sources of footage for his film-making.  Sadly, one realization has her proclaiming, even if only to herself,

"Mom, I can't die now.  I just fell in love." (pg. 219)

With that heart-breaking line, Jade seamlessly transforms from the instigator of change to the subject of destiny, good and bad, no longer making things happen, just reacting without deliberating.

I may have been astonished that Sylvia McNicoll would begin Dying to Go Viral with the main character's death but I should have trusted her expertise, the same skills that have made her an award-winning writer.  While I was apprehensive that the storyline would follow that of the play/movie Heaven Can Wait or TV shows like Twice in a Lifetime, I should have trusted Sylvia McNicoll to never write the easy plot, ending with a happily-ever-after.  Her plot has Jade trying to make things right and not always succeeding (hmm, sounds like real life) and learning a lot about herself and others when she takes the time to experience her life.  Her death and her return to her corporeal body allow her to make lemonade out of lemons for herself and others. Her story proves that lemonade can be sour but there is sweetness to be had if you make it right.  Jade did, courtesy of Sylvia McNicoll.

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If you'd like to attend the book's launch and you're around Burlington, Ontario at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 9, 2013, check out her mother-daughter book launch.  Or you could watch Sylvia McNicoll's virtual book launch below or at http://youtu.be/ZNfM6FpkqPU in which she speaks about her new book, including the originating idea of Dying to Go Viral.


Dying to Go Viral Online Book Launch

Published by Sylvia McNicoll on June 6, 2013 on YouTube.

Little Jane and the Nameless Isle

by Adira Rotstein
Dundurn
978-1-459704206
260 pp.
Ages 9-12
2012

When I reviewed Adira Rotstein's first book in her A Little Jane Silver Adventure series, Little Jane Silver (Dundurn, 2011), I pictured Little Jane akin to Astrid Lindgren's famous Pippi Longstocking, a buccaneer's confident daughter who enjoys adventures and mocking authority or at least nasty adults.  But I was wrong.  I did Little Jane a great disservice.  She may dream about having the sorts of adventures that her father, Long John Silver the Second a.k.a. Jim, speaks of so descriptively (!) but she is always anchored to her family and the pirates with whom they sail.  She may be determined but she is never self-serving, often thinking of others first and charitably considering others' pride before her own.  If she happens to have an adventure or two along the way, even better, because she is really tired of the "Little" moniker she has been stuck with for so long. Luckily for her, in Little Jane and the Nameless Isle, Jane comes into her own, organizing a ship, crew and rescue, all without her parents' help because they're the ones who need rescuing.

Little Jane and the Nameless Isle begins with Jane and the crew's cook, Ishiro, being the only two who escaped when her parents' ship Pieces of Eight was attacked and destroyed by the pirate hunter, Captain Fetzcaro Madsea.  Madsea has been aided by her parents' villainous former bosun, Ned Ronk, for the purpose of leading them to hidden treasure on the Nameless Isle.  On board Madsea's ship Panacea, Long Jim has been left crippled from the attack and, knowing that he isn't in a position to fight when Mary is threatened, gives up some information about the treasure.  But, not to worry.  In addition to still being in love and caring deeply for their daughter, Jane's parents are formidable pirates and they have plans of their own for Madsea and his crew, none of which require giving up their gold.

As Ishiro is gravely ill, Jane takes it upon herself to request the help of the local magistrate, Villienne, who is Britain's representative on the island and understandably opposed to piracy.  However, Villienne is a man who prides himself on taking responsibility for all the people of the island and states that "...it was quite bad form for someone to take my citizens' ship by force!" (pg. 13) Moreover, Villienne is a man of great wisdom,

"Personally, I believe violence is only the province of the impatient, the incompetent, and the seriously-out-of-options" (pg.13)

and scientific curiosity, investigating all flora and fauna and even concocting a remedy for Ishiro.  Consequently, Villienne is enthusiastic about helping Jane procure a ship, even insisting on joining the crew.  This is quite fortunate as the magistrate helps Jane decipher a code on her wooden sword, MELVIN, which points their way to the treasure on Nameless Isle.

Through encounters with tasty (though digestively-challenging) orange birds and other spiteful avian species, a moat of dangerous creatures, treacherous terrain and old friends, all the characters attempt to "hold fast", Jim's perennial message, though some are better than others at it, especially when unencumbered by faulty knock-off arms.  Jane ultimately rescues her parents, though not as straightforwardly as might have been possible.  But it doesn't matter.  Those who made fun of her are those who never mattered anyway.  And any glitches in the rescue simply open other doors to further growth and learning, which are always welcome.

In her Little Jane Silver Adventures, Adira Rotstein has created a gutsy girl protagonist, a Katniss Everdeen for the middle-grade readers.  She can stand up to nasty pirates and inflexible bureaucrats, with a sense of humour, without needing a romance to fulfill her destiny; after all, she is only twelve.  As for Little Jane's resemblance to Pippi, it is limited to their spirit and exuberance for adventures, and perhaps their southern seas locales.  But Little Jane should be every pirate-parent's daughter and every child's friend, respectfully leading only when others insist on accompanying her, aware of everyone's need to accept their own challenges, though a little push sometimes doesn't hurt. I look forward to Little Jane's next adventure, hopeful that she will continue to create stories from which her own implausible yarns may be told.