Welcome to my stop on the Shudder Blog Tour, I'm excited to take part.
The Guest Post is situated after the review.
It's only been three days, and already everything is different.
Paragon is behind her, but somehow Alessa's life may actually have gotten worse. In a wrenching twist of fate, she traded the safety and companionship of her sister for that of her true love, losing a vital partner she'd counted on for the ordeal ahead. Her comfortable university life is but a distant memory, as she faces the prospect of surviving a bleak winter on the meager remains of a ravaged world. And if she'd thought she'd tasted fear upon seeing a ghost, she was wrong; now she's discovering new depths of terror while being hunted by a deadly virus and a terrifying pack of superhuman creatures thirsting for blood.
And then there are the visions.
The memory-altering "stitch" unlocked something in Alessa's mind, and now she can't shake the constant flood of alien feelings ransacking her emotions. Haunting memories of an old flame are driving a deep and painful rift into her once-secure relationship. And a series of staggering revelations about the treacherous Engineers - and the bone-chilling deceit shrouding her world's sorry history - will soon leave Alessa reeling...
The second installment in the electrifying Stitch Trilogy, Shudder follows Samantha Durante's shocking and innovative debut with a heart-pounding, paranormal-dusted dystopian adventure sure to keep the pages turning.
My Thoughts.
Shudder is the second book in the Stitch Trilogy by Samantha Durante, I was a part of the blog tour for the first book Stitch (find my review here), which I absolutely loved, so when I was asked to take part in the blog tour for Shudder I jumped at the chance.
Set just three days after the finale of the first book and Alessa and Isaac are scouting for a new base for the Rebels to abide while they plan their attack on Paragon.
Along the way it's anything but a smooth journey, having to contend with creatures that are out to kill them, Alessa suffering from debilitating thoughts and feelings of people before they died, that render her at times immobile, and also the chance that they could both contract the deadly virus that killed the vast majority of the worldwide population.
Interspersed throughout we have a couple of separate storylines going on as well, a girl with amnesia given the name Phoenix in hospital visited by the members of the Ruling Class, explaining to her the history of how Paragon came to be, and their involvement and reasons for why they did the things the way they did, but do they have ulterior motives behind these visits?
We also follow the story of a teenage boy and girl who are being held prisoner in the Paragon prison and their interaction with each other whilst jailed there.
Of course just like the first book, Shudder has an ending that will have you desperate to get your hands on the next book Stuck.
I look forward to continuing on with this series, and to see what else is in store for us readers.
I give this 3.5/5 Stars.
Haven’t read the first book in the series? Check it out
on Amazon and Goodreads. Just
$0.99!
Guest Post.
Guest
Post: Celebrating the Stitch 1-Year Anniversary by Samantha Durante, author of
the Stitch Trilogy
Wow. Has it really been a year already??
One year ago today I kicked off
the blog tour for my first ever book, Stitch (Stitch Trilogy, Book 1), and even
365 days later, it’s still kind of surreal.
I wrote a book? And people read
it?? So I’m really an author???
And now, almost 10 weeks into the
Shudder Blog Tour, I still can’t quite believe that I’ve written two
books, and even more people have read them, and said people are now
asking me where the third one is (it’s coming, I promise!).
It’s been quite the year – that
much is for sure. Not only did I finally
achieve a lifelong dream of publishing a book, but in the same 12 months, I
also got married, bought a house, and, oh – got pregnant with my first child
(due in Oct!). So lots of change going
on in my life, but all good things as well.
:-)
Looking at my life today, I have
to say that I’m quite content. If I can
just manage to continue doing the things I’m doing today – writing, raising a
family, loving my husband and family and friends, and just generally enjoying
each day as it comes – I will be a very happy girl for many years to come.
But it wasn’t always an easy road
to get here. It required (like anything
else) a little sacrifice, a lot of hard work, and healthy dash of blind faith
that if I just follow my heart, everything will work out the way it’s supposed
to. So what have I learned in my
journey? Here are the top three lessons:
1. Do what you love. I know, I
know – people say this all the time.
Easier said than done. It took me
years (like 25 years!) to even realize *what* it is that I love to do
(write). So I know how difficult this
sounds, and I’m not going to lie, it takes a lot of introspection, listening to
the people around you, following your gut even when it’s scary, and just a bit
of dumb luck to figure this out.
But I can also promise you this –
if you manage to find a way to make your passions your life instead of
just trying to squeeze them into your life, you will be infinitely
happier. Because suddenly, you’ll look
forward to what you have to do every day, even when it’s stressful. I still spend plenty of time agonizing over
how much stuff I need to write, but when I sit down and actually do it,
all that stress magically disappears. I
lose myself in the work, because I truly enjoy it. And I can’t say that about any other job I’ve
ever held.
2. Take risks.
Okay, this
one is even scarier. But the fact of the
matter is, it HAS to be done. You will never
move forward in your life if you don’t just suck it up and go for what you
want. Once you’ve figured out what you
love to do, you need to make those things a priority, and you can’t let
yourself make excuses.
A few years ago, I knew three
things: 1. I wanted to live closer to my family again, 2. I wanted to start my
own family and have a flexible enough lifestyle to be able to stay home with my
kids, and 3. I wanted to write again, something I hadn’t spent much time doing
since I was a kid. So what did I have to
do to make that happen? Drop my entire
life and move across the country, which included leaving a secure six-figure
career in software engineering and convincing my then-boyfriend (now
husband) to leave his secure six-figure software engineering job, and
then find us both new jobs, which in my case meant starting a business in a
field I had absolutely no credentials in and did not know if I could succeed
at.
I’m not going to lie – it was
scary. And it didn’t help that every
person I told about my plans clearly thought I was crazy. But I had to do it – I had to try, or I would
have been stuck in a wonderful life that I could never truly enjoy because it
wasn’t the life I wanted. So I
repeated to myself as a mantra, “What’s the worst that could happen?” and just
went for it.
And you know what? It was the best thing I ever did. Did everything work out exactly as
planned? Definitely not – there were
some serious hurdles along the way, and points at which I wasn’t sure it was
going to work out at all. But in the
end, it was all okay. Sure, I took a
$50k+ pay cut. But all of a sudden I had
something much more valuable: time, to do with what I want – to write,
to be with my family, to live – and I was happier, healthier, and for
the first time in my life, content. From
there on, everything else just came together.
But only because one day I said, “Damn the consequences,” and decided to
take a risk.
3. Reevaluate, and break the rules as needed. Things
change – life changes. Don’t be afraid
to stop and take a look at where you are and reassess whether your choices are
still working for you. The hardest part
about doing this is managing other people’s expectations – you’ve laid out a
plan, taken some risks to get there, and now you feel like you need to stick to
it. But don’t pigeonhole yourself into
doing something that’s not right for you anymore. Sometimes you need to evolve with the world
around you.
In my case, I didn’t actually set
out to become an author. Writing books
was more of a fantasy for me than anything – I didn’t really ever think I’d do
it, but it was just something that I kept on the backburner, in case I “ever
had time to try.” When I started, I
thought my writing career would be 50% technical/business writing (to pay the
bills) and 50% fun journalistic magazine-type writing (to give me something
creative that I would enjoy doing).
Turns out, I never did any
magazine writing. I didn’t care to badly
enough to put in the time to get those types of jobs, and the business writing
ended up being less technical, more fun, and more plentiful than I expected. So I built a business doing that. And then one day, I realized I actually did
have time to try my hand at a novel, and I started writing Stitch. But I wasn’t sure enough about it to invest the
years needed to succeed in the traditional publishing path, so instead I broke
a few rules and self-published, managing my writing career as my own agent/editor/publisher/publicist/etc. Even though at the time that wasn’t the way
things are *usually* done, it worked for me, so I did it. (And now it’s becoming a lot more common for
other people, too!)
After that experience, I realized
that it wasn’t business writing or magazines that I was interested in – I actually
wanted to write books for a living! So
now I’m running my business and simultaneously working on building a career as
an author. I’m hoping to someday be able
to shift my “work” to 90% books and 10% business writing (just enough to keep
my name out there so that if I ever needed to, I could quickly go back to work
full-time). But I’m not quite there yet.
And you know what? That’s okay.
I’m evolving. Things are
changing. And who knows, maybe once this
baby shows up life is going to throw me a curveball. And if it does, here’s what I’ll do: figure
out what I want to do, take some risks and break some rules to make it happen,
then reevaluate. Because if there’s
anything the past year has taught me, it’s that that works.
So here’s to Stitch’s One Year
Anniversary, and to all the bumps and bruises along the way that made this day
a reality. I hope you find your “Stitch”
too – and when you do, don’t let anything stand in your way.
About Samantha
As an avid lifelong reader of fiction of all sorts, there’s nothing I find more engrossing than an epic sci-fi/fantasy/romance series. I’ve whiled away countless weekends of my life immersed in richly-woven worlds that someone else was kind enough to put on paper, and I’ve always felt a debt of gratitude to these wonderful authors – J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, Suzanne Collins, Christopher Paolini, Sharon Shinn, C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, and most recently Lauren Oliver and Veronica Roth, to name a few.
The
Stitch Trilogy – my very debut series – is my humble attempt to return the favor. My dream is to bring the same enjoyment and delight to readers that these authors have brought to my life. If you find yourself staying up just a little too late to finish another chapter, or sneaking into the bathroom at work to read when things are slow, I will know I have done my job!
I currently live in Westchester County, New York with the two loves of my life – my husband, Sudeep, and my cat, Gio. In addition to penning novels, I am also a freelance business writer and communications consultant at my company,
Medley Media Associates.
Prior to pursuing my passion for writing full time, I spent three years in software engineering at Microsoft and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, where I studied Systems Engineering, Management, Entrepreneurship, and Operations & Information Management at Penn Engineering and Wharton business school. I was also valedictorian of Brewster High School in Brewster, NY, class of 2003.
Are you a new author? Check out the Writer Resources page for helpful advice and a recounting of my experience publishing my first book!
Learn more about Samantha in Author Interviews featured here!
Links.
