Thursday, May 22, 2014

Losing Logan Blog Tour


Today on my blog I have the Losing Logan blog tour. On my stop there is a spotlight, review, guest post, excerpt, and giveaway.

“What if the one thing you never meant to hold on to, is the one thing you can’t let go of?”
Normally finding a hot guy in her bedroom wouldn’t irritate Zoe so badly, but finding her childhood friend Logan there is a big problem. Mostly because he’s dead.

As the only person he can make contact with, he convinces Zoe to help him put together the pieces surrounding his mysterious death so he can move on. Thrust into his world of ultra popular rich kids, Zoe is out of her element and caught in the cross-hairs of Logan’s suspicious ex-girlfriend and the friends he left behind, each of whom had a reason to want him dead. The deeper they dig to find the truth, the closer Zoe gets to a killer who would do anything to protect his secrets. And that’s just the start of her problems because Zoe is falling for a dead guy. 

Excerpt:
“Something interesting?” I ask, tossing the damp yellow towel across my chair.
He doesn’t turn to look at me.
“I’m just bored. I never realized how boring being dead could be.” He sighs deeply, his shoulders slumping as he exhales. “Still, could be worse.”
“Worse than being dead?”
He glances over his shoulder, his blue eyes piercing from across the room. “I could be dead and alone. At least I have you.”
I feel a blush creep up my neck and I try to shrug it off. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re just dying to hang out with me.” Then I force a weak chuckle.
“I mean it, Zoe.” He turns, walking toward me slowly, stopping just a few inches away.  My heart skips in my chest. Even dead he’s the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen. From the sharp slope of his nose to the curve of his jaw, from his broad shoulders to his dirty blonde hair is that perfect-messy that only movie stars seem to be able to achieve.
“If I didn’t have you to talk to—if you couldn’t see me—I’d have gone crazy days ago.” He reaches out and for a second, and idiotic, unrealistic heartbeat in time, I think he’s going to touch my face. But before he gets close he drops his hand to his side and the corners of his mouth turn up just a little.
At which point I realize that I’m standing there like a moron.
“Maybe I should start a business.” I fan out my hands in front of me. “Zoe Reed. Therapist to the dead.”
“You could have business cards with coffins on them.”
I snap my fingers, “And my tag line will be, Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you’re not crazy.”
He laughs and it rolls through the room and across my skin like a cold breeze. I shudder and grab a light denim jacket from my closet.
 “What’s first on the agenda today, General?”
He points to my phone. “First text Carlos about taking you shopping.”
 I stand up tall and salute him. “Yes sir.”
As I’m texting Logan goes over and starts looking through my closet.
“Carlos has one thing right. You are entering a combat zone. You need a first day battle outfit.”
“Ooh, leather and stilettos?”
He looks over his shoulder, frowning.
“The point is to make you look less like…”
“Me?”
“Like you might rip someone in half just for saying hello.”
I put a hand on my hip. “So no leather then.”
“No. I’m thinking a dress. Something feminine.”
Oh sure. Pick the one thing I don’t own.
My phone vibrates. “Ok, Carlos is in, and judging by the amount of happy faces in this text, he’s a little excited.”
It vibrates again.
“He wants to take me to Potomac Mills, to the designer outlets.”
“So?”
“And how shall I pay for those expensive garments? With my good looks and winning personality?”
He frowns. I take a deep breath and go to my dresser, pulling open the top drawer. Pushing aside the underwear I grab the small black wallet.
“I didn’t want to have to do this.” I open the billfold and remove the one lonely card from the slot.
“What’s that?”
“My debit card to my college fund.” I clutch it tightly. What little inheritance I’d received from my dad’s insurance policy went into his account. I’ve never used a penny of it, not until now. It always felt like blood money.
“Do you have enough?” he asks.
 I glare at him.
“You owe me for this, Logan. Big time. When you get up there, you had better give me a damn good recommendation. I mean it.”
He grins, “Deal.” 

Review:
OMG! I absolutely loved this book! From the dedication which is just the best one I have ever seen to the ending. It’s just amazing and heart breaking all at the same time.

Zoe and Logan were best friends for years but once they entered high school everything changed and they no longer talk. It’s now a few years later and Logan has died, but Zoe can still see him which leads her to think this is all some big joke. But once she realizes that Logan is in fact really dead and she can see and talk to him she is heartbroken and thinks she is crazy. But who wouldn’t think that? Soon Zoe starts to help Logan with his unfinished business but getting thrown into his crowd of popular rich kids which is not her element at all, she needs to find out which of them killed him before she not only risks her life but her very heart to Logan.

I loved this book so much that I literally read it in one sitting. I just could not put my kindle. The whole story from the plot to the characters is so well written that I couldn’t help but get lost in this story.

Zoe is a great heroine. I connected to her on so many levels and really felt as if I was in the book right along with her experiencing everything with her. Which shows just how well Sherry has written her.

Logan what can I say about him except he is swoon worthy and just perfect well except for being dead and all but still I loved him. He had so much growth in this book for being a dead guy that I enjoyed every minute of the story he was in.

The ending well I won’t give anything away except it’s just perfect even though Sherry had me ugly crying which doesn’t happen very often from books. 5/5 Bloody Fangs  

Book Links:
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Sherry D. Ficklin is a full time writer from Colorado where she lives with her husband, four kids, two dogs, and a fluctuating number of chickens and house guests. A former military brat, she loves to travel and meet new people. She can often be found browsing her local bookstore with a large white hot chocolate in one hand and a towering stack of books in the other. That is, unless she’s on deadline at which time she, like the Loch Ness monster, is only seen in blurry photographs.
She is the author of The Gods of Fate Trilogy now available from Dragonfly Publishing. Her previously self-published novel After Burn: Military Brats has been acquired by Harlequin and will be released in 2014 with a second book in that series to follow. Her newest YA steampunk novel, Extracted: The Lost Imperials book 1, co-written with Tyler H. Jolley is now available everywhere books are sold and her newest YA novel, Losing Logan, is due for release in 2014 from Clean Teen Publishing. 

Guest Post:
Mature Content in YA books

For me, writing always begins with a spark, usually it’s the voice of a character in my head. Losing Logan was no exception. I knew Zoe’s ‘voice’ long before I knew her story. I’ve gotten several complements on how I managed to so accurately and honestly “capture a real teenager’s voice.”
It’s not a secret. Zoe is a blend of several girls I knew as a teenager. A bit like me, a bit like my friends, she sounds real because everything from her language to her mannerisms is how we spoke, how we moved at that age.
And that’s part of the reason I got the mature rating.
It’s funny that Losing Logan got picked up by Clean Teen Publishing, because it is by far the rawest, most unfiltered book I’ve ever written. Their thing isn’t censorship of content, it’s more about disclosure. Each of their books is read and rated based on things like violence, language, sensuality, and adult situations—so readers know what they are getting into up front and can decide for themselves. When they sent me my ratings, I laughed out loud. I think I scored 4s and 5s on each category.
Did I make the book mature on purpose? Not really. I mean, things like underage drinking, homosexuality, and teen pregnancy were just facts of life in my high school. I never considered not including them. I didn’t add them for shock value, they are in the book as they are in life, a small part of a much larger story.
And as far as language, Zoe has a very colorful dialogue. Again, that’s because that’s how my friends and I talked. Like sailors on a three day pass. I didn’t hold back, but I didn’t add anything for the sake of pushing the limits either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a parent of teenagers. I always tell them not to cuss. But at the same time, I accept that they probably do, at least around their friends.
Doesn’t make it GOOD. Just makes it REAL.
And at the end of the day, that’s what I want to write. Yes, I have lots of teen books where there’s no swearing at all. It’s especially hard for me, because of my religion, I feel a lot of pressure to uphold those standards in my writing. But I also have discovered that not every character will have the same standards I do, so why on earth would they all speak and act the way I do? So when I write a character who doesn’t swear, it’s because that character, for whatever reason, wouldn’t swear. But for Zoe, her acid tongue is a vital part of who she is, and there’s a reason she does what she does and says what she says. It’s true to her character.
I realize that some people are going to have an issue with it. I decided a long time ago that what other people think doesn’t define me. So love it or hate it, you can’t say it isn’t honest. 

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Thank you for stopping by my blog today. I would also like to say Thank You to Sherry for letting me review your book and say Thank You to Jaidis for letting me participate in this blog tour. Don't forget to enter the giveaway below. 
~Sabrina 
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