Monday 15 June 2015

PROMOTION - GIFTED - THE HAYVERN SERIES BY J.A. GEORGE

Title: Gifted
Series: The Hayvern Series
Author: J.A. George
Release Date: 10th May 2015

BLURB from Goodreads
“Why do birds fly? Why do lions hunt deer? Why does the sun shine and the moon glow? Because it must. I wish I could tell you why, I truly do. It mustn’t be easy, such pressure weighted on such young shoulders, but we do not always choose the lives we must lead.” 
Avery Gray had no choice but to be different. She was not born that way; she was chosen. 
After having met a special, silver-haired woman, and the handsome and enigmatic Theodore-James Connors, Ava finds herself in Hayven, a city separated from the rest of the world, where only gifters – ordinary people with extra-ordinary gifts – can go. With Theo, his friends, Hayven, her gift, and the ability to ‘travel’ in different colours, Ava must now accept that she can no longer classify herself as normal. As friendships develop, and Theo and Ava become closer than she anticipated, it turns out her new gifted life comes with a catch. With no choice or say on the matter, Ava must save a city she is starting to fall in love with; a city that has almost begun to feel like home. 


 PURCHASE LINKS


MEET THE AUTHOR

***J.A. George***

Hello J.A. George, welcome to my blog! This is a fairly new post to my blog so . . .Please go ahead and tell us a little about yourself and your writing.

Hello!
You’ve probably never heard of me and so I suppose this is the perfect opportunity to introduce myself. My name is J.A. George and I’m the author of Gifted: The Hayven Series. If I were to summarise Gifted in a nutshell, it would go along the lines of something like this:
“Why do birds fly? Why do lions hunt deer? Why does the sun shine and the moon glow? Because it must. I wish I could tell you why, I truly do. It mustn’t be easy, such pressure weighted on such young shoulders, but we do not always choose the lives we must lead.” 
Avery Gray had no choice but to be different. She was not born that way; she was chosen. 
After having met a special, silver-haired woman, and the handsome and enigmatic Theodore-James Connors, Ava finds herself in Hayven, a city separated from the rest of the world, where only gifters – ordinary people with extra-ordinary gifts – can go. With Theo, his friends, Hayven, her gift, and the ability to ‘travel’ in different colours, Ava must now accept that she can no longer classify herself as normal. As friendships develop, and Theo and Ava become closer than she anticipated, it turns out her new gifted life comes with a catch. With no choice or say on the matter, Ava must save a city she is starting to fall in love with; a city that has almost begun to feel like home. 
Yup – that’s an acceptable nutshell.
As you could probably already guess from the blurb, Gifted fits into a few different genres, but I would narrow them down to young adult, romance, and fantasy, but a few traces of dystopian adventure and mystery can be seen floating around inside Gifted.
The one question I get asked the most about my book is where I got the idea from. I have no idea where I got the idea from and I’m guessing it would probably be useless of me to tell you it simply fell into my head one day but it often does feel like that’s exactly what happened. I guess I could say I got a bit tired of the UK (where I live!), setting-wise, and thought it would be fun to make up my own place – Hayven. I think it’s impossible for authors not to be inspired by great books they’ve read before and some of my favourite YA books, (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.) aren’t set in your typical rainy UK climate. Plus, it was so much more fun to make up my own world because really, anything goes; no-one can tell you the place you’ve made up isn’t accurate because well, you’ve made it up, so it can’t be!
The concept of being gifted stemmed from me. No, unfortunately, I am not supernaturally gifted (yet – I’m waiting on it…patiently…) but I am obsessed with people who are different. I like the idea of ordinary people being extra-ordinary in some way or another, and so I made a city full of normal people with gifts that are anything but normal. None of the characters in my book are based on people I know, rather influenced, and so I’ve mixed different bits of like, four people and made it into one person. Are any of the characters influenced by me? I suppose they are. I try to make them as realistic as possible so readers can imagine seeing these people walking down their streets on a regular Wednesday, so when it came to revealing mind-blowing news, I had the characters react in a way I believe I would have. That’s my main aim for Gifted, for people like you (book lovers) to read it and think that what happens to Ava (my main character) could happen to you (hopefully only the good bits concerning Ava’s life happen to you!) because if you think about it, nothing’s impossible, right?
My favourite thing about writing Gifted was thinking up different supernatural talents because I’ve made a hook in the book to be that no two gifted people have the same gift, and there are approximately two million people in Hayven alone, so it took some imagination, and a lot of chocolate-eating. Another thing I enjoyed about writing Gifted was planning out the entire four book series because only Gifted (book 1) is fully written and who knows, I may even edit that further. I written a lot of bits and pieces concerning the other three books and even have prospective titles but they are by no means finished yet. I am completing them in order though, so book number two (The Silver Orb – maybe…) is the one that is almost completed but I know what is going to happen in books three and four too and I’ve written copious amounts of scenes, that I’m sure will not all be featured in the books, but my mind comes up with new things to add to the book series all the time so it truly is a work in progress.
The title Gifted just seemed the most appropriate as I wanted to summarise the entire book in one word and I think Gifted does that really well, and I will also follow that trend with my other three books that form the series. My book cover is an interesting topic (well, to me anyway) because when I found a cover designer I liked (viladesign - http://www.viladesign.net/) the only thing I knew was that I didn’t want an actual person on the cover but rather an important image, and I finally decided on Mysteria Park (a park in the book that is featured on the book cover). The scene and significance surrounding Mysteria Park is why I felt it was best to have it featured on the front cover and Tatiana was perfect at getting a real sense for what I was after and together we came up with the book cover!


AUTHOR INTERVIEW

And now to a post style I am more used to, an more formal style Interview with the author of Gifted, The Hayvern Series, J.A. George.

What is your name and where were you born?
My name is Jessica George and I live in London, UK.

Did you always want to be a writer? If not what did you want to be?
Throughout my entire life I’ve wanted to grow up to be so many things. I’ve wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a baker, a publisher and many more, but until a few years ago, not an author. Not because the sound of being an author didn’t appeal to me but because I didn’t believe I could turn my hobby, something I enjoy doing and do for fun, into a job. My English Literature teachers always had positive things to say about my creative writing but I never really processed the idea of writing becoming a future job; now I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.

Did it take a long time to get your first book published?
I’m a self-published author and so publishing my own book was a relatively quick and easy process but the stages before pressing the ‘publish’ button took over a year. My first book Gifted is part of a four book series and the first thing I did was settle on the title of the first book as I felt if I had a title, I could go from there. Next, I briefly planned out the entire four book series before developing Gifted further until it became the novel it is today. Then, I had to go through numerous drafts with my editor before we both decided it was good to go. Then I had to look for a cover designer who I worked with until we felt the cover fitted the storyline perfectly.

Have you ever based characters on people you know or based events on things that have happened to you?
Oddly enough, none of the characters in my book are wholly based on people I know, rather influenced, and so I’ve mixed different bits of perhaps, four people and made it into one person.

Are character names and place names decided after their creation? or do you pick a character/place name and then invent them?
As for choosing the names, I had a lot of help from Google. I would search until I found a long list of names; I would thoroughly look through it, maybe even more than once, until I found one that suited the personality of the character. When it comes to making up my characters, I start off with their personality, then their name and then their physical description.

What book genre/genres do you like to read yourself?
I love to read a variety of genres but my favourites are Young Adult, Fantasy and Romance. I love novels that cross over so that they can’t fit into only one genre.

Which format of book do you prefer to read yourself, ebook, hardback, or paperback?
I enjoy both paperback and e-book now that I have a kindle.

Did you have a favourite author as a child?
My favourite author as a child is and still is, Roald Dahl; he was an absolute creative genius. My favourite book of his is George’s Marvellous Medicine.

If you could invite three favourite writers to dinner, who would you invite and enjoy chatting with?
My first guest would definitely be Roald Dahl because I would love to pick his brain. JK Rowling because she’s as equally as creative and imaginative in my mind and lastly, Toni Morrison – her writing just blows me away no matter how many times I read it.

Where can readers follow you?
Goodreads author page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25561417-gifted?from_search=true&search_version=service

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gifted-Hayven-Book-J-George-ebook/dp/B00XIGZ41S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432986782&sr=8-1&keywords=gifted+hayven


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