Tag Archives: Harper Collins

Guest Post – I Was Born For This YA Playlist by Alice Oseman

Today I am super excited to have the phenomenal Alice Oseman on Tales to celebrate the release of her new fantastic YA, I Was Born For This.

I Was Born For This was released on the 3rd May 2018 published by Harper Collins Children’s and the reviews that I’ve already seen prove that this is a book not to be missed!

Also check out these beautiful redesigns of Alice’s two previous YA books…..as well as being fantastic they are simply gorgeous!

So today Alice is sharing another song from her #YAPlaylist for I Was Born This Way and I am sharing a song from my playlist too….

The third novel from the phenomenally talented Alice Oseman – one of the most talked about YA writers in recent years.

For Angel Rahimi life is about one thing: The Ark – a pop-rock trio of teenage boys who are taking the world by storm. Being part of The Ark’s fandom has given her everything she loves – her friend Juliet, her dreams, her place in the world.

Jimmy Kaga-Ricci owes everything to The Ark. He’s their frontman – and playing in a band with his mates is all he ever dreamed of doing.

But dreams don’t always turn out the way you think and when Jimmy and Angel are unexpectedly thrust together, they find out how strange and surprising facing up to reality can be.

A funny, wise, and heartbreakingly true coming of age novel. I Was Born for This is a stunning reflection of modern teenage life, and the power of believing in something – especially yourself.

YA Playlist

Alice

Heavydirtysoul – Twenty One Pilots

I included a Twenty One Pilots song in my I Was Born for This playlist because they’re one of the closest bands to how I imagine The Ark sound! Also, ‘Heavydirtysoul’ has lyrics that reflect some of Angel’s feelings towards The Ark. “Can you save my heavy dirty soul” is completely how Angel feels towards The Ark – she looks towards them to solve all of her problems by distracting her from thinking about anything in her own life.

Chelle

Buddy Holly by Weezer

Believe it or not it took me a long time to pick just one song to feature on this post. Like many of us music to me is so symbolic of different moments in time throughout life and represents so many different feelings…. feelings of love, hurt, friendship, breakups, a particular time and maybe a particular memory. For me that is what the song Buddy Holly by Weezer represents. In fact it encompasses and reminds me of so many of these feeling and memories that it makes me feel quite emotional listening to it now a days.

I was 14 or 15 when this song came out at the time I was very much into grunge idolising Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl from Nirvana with all of my teenage angst and then this funky fun rock song came along and I was so on board that fandom! It was one of the first songs I learnt to play on the guitar with my friend Katie and we even plucked up the courage to enter a competition playing and singing along to it. The two of us up on the stage with our amps, microphones and guitars nervous, but loving life. Unbelievably we came second place! This song gave me the confidence to pursue music and singing further whilst I was at school leading me to do things I never would have imagined myself doing including auditioning for the school musical where I got given the lead part. To this day I don’t know how that even happened. It is a confidence I have never really had or felt since if I am honest.

Further into my Weezer fandom it would follow me through first loves, breakups, sadness, hurt and times of laughing, smiling and sitting in my room learning the riffs to play along with Weezer on my guitar. So many memories from one song and one band. This is was nostalgia feels like.

It’s amazing what music can do and like Angel in I Was Born This Way maybe music did distract me in a way and give me the most wonderful memories some of them good and some of them bad but most of all memories that I want to cling onto forever and that I wouldn’t change for the world!

You can buy a copy of I Was Born For This here or from your local bookshop

You can check out Alice’s full YA Playlist for I Was Born This Way here

About Alice Oseman

Alice Oseman was born in 1994 in Kent, England. She completed a degree in English at Durham University in 2016 and is currently a full-time writer and illustrator. Alice can usually be found staring aimlessly at computer screens, questioning the meaninglessness of existence, or doing anything and everything to avoid getting an office job.

Alice’s first book, SOLITAIRE, was published when she was nineteen. Her second, RADIO SILENCE, was released in early 2016.

You can find out more about Alice on her website – www.aliceoseman.com

Or why not follow Alice on twitter – @AliceOseman

Blog Tour

You can catch up or follow the rest of this fab blog tour at the following stops!

#IWasBornForThis

#IWBFT

#YAplaylist

A huge thank you to Nina Douglas for asking me to take part in this fab blog tour and to Alice for sharing the insight into the song from her playlist.

Have you read I Was Born For This? What did you think? What would be on your YA Playlist? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button above or tweet my on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

Spotlight – The Lies We Told by Camilla Way

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Today I am shining the spotlight on a brilliant new adult thriller, The Lies We Told by Camilla Way!

The Lies We Told was released on the 3rd May 2018 published by Harper Collins and is set to be an absolute page turner of a book!

So lets find out more….

DO YOU PROMISE NOT TO TELL?

A DAUGHTER
Beth has always known there was something strange about her daughter, Hannah. The lack of emotion, the disturbing behaviour, the apparent delight in hurting others… sometimes Beth is scared of her, and what she could be capable of.

A SON
Luke comes from the perfect family, with the perfect parents. But one day, he disappears without trace, and his girlfriend Clara is left desperate to discover what has happened to him.

A LIFE BUILT ON LIES
As Clara digs into the past, she realizes that no family is truly perfect, and uncovers a link between Luke’s long-lost sister and a strange girl named Hannah. Now Luke’s life is in danger because of the lies once told and the secrets once kept. Can she find him before it’s too late?

You can buy a copy of The Lies We Told here or from your local bookshop!

About Camilla Way

Camilla Way was born in Greenwich, south-east London in 1973. Her father was the poet and author Peter Way. After attending Woolwich College she studied modern English and French literature at the University of Glamorgan. Formerly Associate Editor of the teenage girls’ magazine she is currently an editor and writer on the men’s style magazine Arena. Having lived in Cardiff, Bristol, Bath and Clerkenwell, she now lives in south-east London.

You can follow Camilla on twitter – @CamillaLWay

Blog Tour

You can catch up or follow the rest of this fab blog tour at the following stops!

#thelieswetold

A huge thank you to Heidi Bland for asking me to take part and sending me a copy of the book.

Have you read The Lies We Told? What did you think? Did it keep you guessing? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button above or tweet my on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

Guest Post – Our Fantasy Coven by Katharine & Elizabeth Corr

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Today I am excited to be part of The Witch’s Blood Blog Tour to celebrate the third and final book in the trilogy!

The Witch’s Blood by Katharine & Elizabeth Corr was released on the 8th March 2018 published by Harper Collins Children’s Books and is a must for any fantasy fan!

Today Katharine & Elizabeth are talking about their fantasy coven in this fab guest post…

Just who can you trust when no one around you is who they seem?

The final spell-binding book in THE WITCH’S KISS trilogy by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.

Life as a teenage witch just got harder for Merry when her brother, Leo is captured and taken into an alternative reality by evil witch Ronan. Determined to get him back, Merry needs to use blood magic to outwit her arch-rival and get Leo back. Merry is more powerful than ever now, but she is also more dangerous and within the coven, loyalties are split on her use of the magic. In trying to save Leo, Merry will have to confront evil from her past and present and risk the lives of everyone she’s ever loved. Given the chaos she’s created, just what will she sacrifice to make things right?

Our Fantasy Coven

‘Being a witch meant becoming familiar with hundreds of years’ worth of spells and techniques and history. Merry understood the necessity, sort of. She had to be able to cast spells with the other witches so she could become a full member of the coven. Witchcraft was a team sport. Or at least it was supposed to be.’

Merry, our main character in The Witch’s Kiss trilogy, has a love/hate relationship with the coven that she (sort of) belongs to. Excluded initially because her mum refuses to let her practise magic, Merry starts training to join the coven in The Witch’s Tears, but she chafes against the rules and restrictions. And the other coven members aren’t entirely comfortable being around Merry either, especially as her power grows. Still, the coven has an important part to play, for good or ill (no, we’re not going to tell you which!) before the end of The Witch’s Blood. We rather like the idea of having a bunch of powerful witch friends to hang out with, so we’ve decided to put together our own Fantasy Coven (limited to eleven witches, because it’s the closest we’re likely to get to picking a fantasy football team).

Granny Weatherwax (The Discworld books, Terry Pratchett)

One of our favourite Discworld characters, illustrated here by Paul Kidby. Granny Weatherwax is wise, really powerful, sharp as a scalpel, and always does the right thing. Not necessarily the nice thing, mind you. She would be brilliant as our coven leader and would have no trouble keeping the more morally ambiguous members in line.

Nanny Ogg (The Discworld books)

The brown sauce to Granny’s bacon sandwich. Nanny would be the one to keep an eye on the coven’s younger members, and she’d be sure to supply plenty of interesting ‘refreshments’ for those late-night coven meetings.

Maleficent

We’re plumping for the Angelina Jolie version here because a) she’s much nicer than in the Disney cartoon, b) she has cheekbones to die for and c) has wings. Super useful for when your broomstick breaks down.

Hermione Granger (The Harry Potter books, JK Rowling)

As the brightest witch in her generation (or probably almost any generation, let’s face it), we think Hermione would get on really well with Granny Weatherwax. Plus, we’d really like
to see Hermione as part of a team of powerful witches without any of those annoying (and, let’s face it, less talented) wizards hanging around.

Merry Cooper (The Witch’s Kiss trilogy)

Merry doesn’t have Hermione’s application and love of studying, but she is really powerful and she’s determined to take care of the people she loves. Definitely someone we’d like on our side.

Meg (from Meg & Mog, Helen Nicoll/Jan Pieńkowski)

Meg’s spells don’t always go to plan, but we’d still love to have her in the coven: for starters we’d get to pet Mog, which we’d love as we’re both cat people. Plus Meg has all the traditional witchy paraphernalia: cauldron, broomstick, black boots, black dress and pointy black hat. The quintessential witch.

Willow (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Super loyal, bookish and fun to hang out with, we think Merry and Willow would get on like a house on fire. Both witches are extremely powerful and at times find if difficult to exercise due restraint: but ultimately both seek to use their power to protect the ones they love. And you can’t blame them for that. Also, being in a coven might help Willow stay on the right side of the line when it came to magic; she has been known to dabble in some very dark spells…

Glinda the good witch (from The Wizard of Oz, L Frank Baum)

Glinda’s outfit choice literally makes pink the new black. We’d like our coven to be as blinged up as possible: sparkly ballgowns and jewel-studded broomsticks all the way. No sneaking around secretly for us! Also, unlike some of the other witches in our coven, Glinda has impeccable manners. She’d be useful when diplomacy is required.

Sally and Gillian Owens (Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman)

Confession time: we haven’t yet read the book on which the Sandra Bullock/Nicole Kidman film is based. Still, from the film version, we think these highly talented siblings would be good coven members: just like Merry and Leo, they’re absolutely devoted to one another, working best as a team. Plus, they have fabulous hair, a keen fashion sense and would certainly – along with Glinda – inject some much-needed glamour into the coven. Not a wart in sight.

Arianwyn (The Apprentice Witch, James Nicol)

Arianwyn is a little bit like Mildred Hubble: she gets off to a slow start, magically speaking. Failing her witch’s assessment, she’s sent off to the remote village of Lull to start life as an apprentice, somewhat in disgrace. However, just like Mildred, there’s much more to this resilient and courageous young witch than meets the eye. Not only is she fiercely loyal, considerate and kind, it turns out she’s way more powerful than anyone realised. All in all, she’s a real sweetie – the sort of witch who would definitely have your back.

Witches we definitely WON’T be letting into the coven: Jadis (aka the White Witch from the Narnia books by CS Lewis), Nancy Downs (The Craft) and Bellatrix le Strange (Harry Potter). We just don’t think any of them are really team players… But what do you think? Who would be in your fantasy coven?

Thank you so much to Michelle for being one of our blog tour hosts!

You can buy a copy of The Witch’s Blood here or from your local bookshop!

About Katharine & Elizabeth Corr

We are sisters and best friends (try writing a book with someone else and you’ll see why that last bit is kind of important). After spending our childhood in Essex, we now live ten minutes away from each other in Surrey. We both studied history at university and went to work in London for a bit. Then we stopped working to raise families, because somehow we missed the memo explaining that children are far more demanding than clients or bosses. When we both decided to write novels – on account of fictional people being much easier to deal with than real ones – it was obvious we should do it together.

Stuff Katharine likes: playing instruments badly; dead languages; LOTR; loud pop concerts; Jane Austen; Neill Gaiman; Loki; the Surrey Hills. Killing off characters.

Stuff Elizabeth likes: sketching, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cinema, long baths, kitchen discos, Terry Pratchett, Thor, London. Saving characters.

Stuff we both like: YA / non-YA fantasy and science fiction,Star Wars, Star Trek, each other (most of the time).

You can find out more about Katharine and Elizabeth on their website – www.corrsisters.com

Or why not follow them on twitter – @katharinecorr and @lizcorr_writes

Previously on Tales….

You can catch previous posts by Katharine & Elizabeth Corr by clicking on the below links…

Our Favourite Literary Curses

Our Favourite Magical Moments In Literature

Blog Tour

You can follow or catch up on the rest of this fab blog tour at the following stops!

A huge huge thank you to Katharine and Elizabeth for such a superb guest post and for being so lovely to invite me onto the blog tour! Also a huge thank you to Jess at Harper Collins for having me and sending me a copy of the book.

Have you read any of The Witch’s Kiss Trilogy? What did you think? Who would be in your coven? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of this review or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

Guest Post – Why Science? by Ross Welford

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I am so excited to have the brilliant Ross Welford on Tales today with an absolutely brilliant guest post!

Ross is the author of the amazing Time Travelling With A Hamster that was released in 2016 and was a Waterstones Children’s book of the month. Whilst I’ve not had a chance to read this one yet my son absolutely adored this book!

What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible was released on the 29th December 2016 published by Harper Collins and is set to be another fab read!

I’m THAT excited that both books are part of the British Books Challenge January Prize pack with thanks to Harper Collins Children’s.

For today’s guest post I got to ask Ross exactly why he includes science in his books…..

From the author of the unforgettable bestseller TIME TRAVELLING WITH A HAMSTER comes another surprising, beautiful and funny novel about a child who, by disappearing, will write herself into your heart forever…

Turning invisible at will: it’s one way of curing your acne. But far more drastic than 13 year-old Ethel Leatherhead intended when she tried a combination of untested medicines and a sunbed.

It’s fun at first, being invisible. And aided by her friend Boydy, she manages to keep her extraordinary ability secret. Or does she…?

When one day the invisibility fails to wear off, Ethel is thrown into a nightmare of lies and deception as she struggles to keep herself safe, to find the remedy that will make her seen again – and solve the mystery of her own birth…

Why Science?

It startled me when I first saw Time Travelling With A Hamster referred to as “science fiction”. It really had not occurred to me.

I mean, I’m not even much of a Sci-fi fan! Epic space battles involving alien overlords from planets with X’s and Z’s in their name just don’t do it for me.

Nor am I much of a scientist, having dropped physics at school age 14. So the physics of relativity in Hamster was as much a discovery for me as it is for the reader. The challenge for Middle Grade, I find, is to keep it simple enough so as not to hold up the story.

So when it came to describing the nature of light in What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible I was obliged to go simpler still. These days there is a kind of broad agreement among scientists about what light is, but the details are still subject to fierce argument. It’s all so complicated that I soon abandoned any idea of delving any further into it than necessary!

That said, I believe invisibility as a real-world concept is far closer to being realised than moving backwards and forwards in time.

In case you are wondering, my next book doesn’t really involve much science at all. Maybe I’ll end up being a writer who sometimes does science fiction rather than a “science fiction writer.”

You can buy a copy of What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible here or from your local bookshop

About Ross Welford

Ross Welford was a magazine journalist and television producer in the UK before becoming an author.

He lives in London with his young family, a border collie, a hamster, and several tropical fish.

Time Travelling With A Hamster is his first book.

A second book, What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible will be published in the UK in early 2017

You can find out more about Ross on his blog – www.dadfood.wordpress.com

Or why not follow him on twitter – @rosswelford

A huge huge thank you to Ross for such a superb guest post. Also a huge thank you to Jess at Harper Collins for sorting out this post and being super wonderful and supportive with the British Books Challenge too!

Have you read Time Travelling With A Hamster or What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible? What did you think? Do you like science in books? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of this review or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

Guest Post – Our Favourite Magical Moments In Literature by Katharine & Elizabeth Corr

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I am over the moon to have been asked to be part of the blog tour for the second book in this fantasy, witch-y, fairy-tale YA series, The Witch’s Tears by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.

The Witch’s Tears is due to be released on the 26th January 2017 published by Harper Collins Children’s Books and is the sequel to lasts years debut The Witch’s Kiss.

I literally cannot wait to read this book! Not only is it set to be an amazing read, but Katharine and Elizabeth are just the loveliest.

I’m THAT excited that both books are part of the British Books Challenge January Prize pack with thanks to Harper Collins Children’s.

For my stop on the blog tour Katharine and Elizabeth share their favourite magical moments in literature!

*swishes magic wand*

Can true love’s kiss save the day…?

Electrifying dark magic debut by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.

Sixteeen-year-old Meredith is fed-up with her feuding family and feeling invisible at school – not to mention the witch magic that shoots out of her fingernails when she’s stressed. Then sweet, sensitive Jack comes into her life and she falls for him hard. The only problem is that he is periodically possessed by a destructive centuries-old curse.

Meredith has lost her heart, but will she also lose her life? Or in true fairytale tradition, can true love’s kiss save the day?

Our Favourite Magical Moments

We LOVE fantasy in all its various guises, both as readers and as writers. Fantasy opens the door into another world, often literally – whether by stepping through a wardrobe, getting swept up by a tornado or climbing into a painting. In fact, these interfaces of the real and the magical might be our favourite elements of fantasy literature: they hold out the promise that any minute, our ordinary lives might become extraordinary. So here, in no particular order, are the top five magical literary moments from our childhood…

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C S Lewis): Lucy finds Narnia

‘And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her… A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.’

Apart from fairy tales, the Narnia stories were our first introduction to fantasy. We both remember exploring an old wardrobe in our grandmother’s house after reading this bit of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. We were utterly crushed not to find a magical land at the back of it.

The Box of Delights (John Masefield): Kay opens the Box for the first time

‘…the Box slowly opened. Inside he saw what he took to be a book, the leaves of which were all chased and worked with multitudinous figures, and the effect that it gave him was that of staring into an opening in a wood.’

We came to this book through first seeing the BBC adaptation. It’s such a wonderful, unique blend of magic and real life (or real life as it was in the 1930s, at least). When Kay first opens the Box he encounters Herne the Hunter and gets to experience life as a stag, a bird and a fish – all within two minutes of human time.

Tom’s Midnight Garden (Philippa Pearce): Tom discovers the garden

‘Tom opened the door wide and let in the moonlight. It flooded in, as bright as daylight – the white daylight that comes before the full rising of the sun. The illumination was perfect.’

Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a clock that strikes thirteen? Tom’s investigation leads to the discovery of the garden that only exists at a special time of night. He goes on to have magical adventures in late Victorian England.

Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Caroll) – Alice climbs through the mirror

‘And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright slivery mist.’

The Looking Glass is another way to escape from reality into a magical world. And yes, we did both check periodically that the mirror over the fireplace at home hadn’t turned into silver gauze. A mirror universe with backwards writing and talking chess pieces was just so tempting

The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper) – Will awakens on Midwinter Day

‘He was woken by music. It beckoned him, lilting and insistent…There was in this music so much of the deepest enchantment of all his dreams and imaginings that he woke smiling in pure happiness at the sound.’

This is the moment when Will Stanton realises he is not just a normal boy. The music beckons him outside and he discovers a snow-covered landscape from the depths of time, and first encounters the Dark Rider who pursues him throughout the rest of the book.

You can buy a copy of The Witch’s Tears here or from your local bookshop

You can catch a previous post from Katharine & Elizabeth Corr about favourite literary curses here

About Katharine & Elizabeth Corr

Stuff Katharine likes: playing instruments badly; dead languages; LOTR; loud pop concerts; Jane Austen; Neill Gaiman; Loki; the Surrey Hills. Killing off characters.

Stuff Elizabeth likes: sketching, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cinema, long baths, kitchen discos, Terry Pratchett, Thor, London. Saving characters.

Stuff we both like: YA / non-YA fantasy and science fiction,Star Wars, Star Trek, each other (most of the time).

You can find out more about Katharine and Elizabeth on their website – www.corrsisters.com

Or why not follow them on twitter – @katharinecorr and @lizcorr_writes

Blog Tour

You can follow or catch up on the rest of this fab blog tour at the following stops!

Have you read The Witch’s Tears or the first book The Witch’s Kiss? What did you think? What are your favourite magical moments in literature? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of this review or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

Guest Post – Our Favourite Literary Curses by Katharine & Elizabeth Corr

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I am over the moon to have been asked to be part of the blog tour for this intriguing fantasy witch-y YA, The Witches Kiss by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.

I literally cannot wait to read this book! The title in itself is full of intrigue and that cover! Hats off to Lisa Brewster for this fab design – you can find an interview with Lisa here!

The Witches Kiss was released on the 30th June 2016 published by Harper Collins Children’s Books.

A huge thank you to Vicki from Harper Collins and Katharine and Elizabeth for having me on this wonderful tour and for sending me a copy of the book.

For my stop on the blog tour, which is the final stop of the tour ,I asked Katharine and Elizabeth for their favourite literary curses!

Read at you peril!

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Can true love’s kiss save the day…?

Our Favourite Literary Curses

Curses are staple ingredients of fantasy and fairy tales. We have three (sort of) curses in The Witch’s Kiss: the curse that turns our prince into a monster, the enchantment that binds him to the evil wizard, and the oath that compels Merry (our hero) to deal with the consequences of the curse in the twenty-first century. So for this, the final stop on our blog tour, we decided to look at our favourite literary curses…

Of Truly Biblical Proportions

‘And unto Adam he said, because thou has hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life…’

According to the Guinness Book of Records the Bible is still the world’s most widely distributed book, and it has curses right at the beginning, in Genesis. The snake gets cursed for tempting Eve, Eve gets cursed for listening to the snake, Adam gets cursed for listening to Eve. And everybody gets kicked out of Eden. It’s all very Old Testament and ends up in lots of other literary creations, including Paradise Lost and Good Omens.

Sleeping Beauty’s Curse

SBC

Thanks to Disney, pretty much the entire universe is familiar with this one. An evil fairy, in retaliation for not being invited to Briar Rose’s christening, puts a curse upon the baby girl: when she reaches her sixteenth birthday she will prick her finger upon a spinning wheel and die. A good fairy attempts to overturn the curse, and although she’s unable to do so, she is at least able to dial it down a smidge. Instead of dying, Briar Rose is doomed to fall into an enchanted sleep for 100 years. And she can only be woken up by a kiss from the son of a king. Somewhere along the way from the original versions of this tale, ‘true love’ was added to the mix, just to make things that extra bit harder (as if snagging royalty wasn’t enough all by itself…).

Beauty and the Beast

BANDBE

As with most fairy tales, there are multiple versions of this particular story. The most famous one (again, thanks Disney!) is the version where the young prince falls victim to a dark curse. One day an old women comes to the castle, asking for shelter from the rain. The prince refuses, whereupon the old woman is revealed to be a powerful fairy. She turns the prince into a hideous beast, declaring that he will only return to his true form upon finding (you guessed it) ‘true love’. Which luckily he does. Still, these fairies! Vengeful lot.

Harry Potter: The Unforgiveable Curses

“Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?” she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. “You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain – to enjoy it – righteous anger won’t hurt me for long – I’ll show you how it is done, shall I?”

Not curses in the strictest sense of the term, but three spells so dark that (as discussed in The Goblet of Fire) their use results in automatic incarceration in Azkaban – at least until legalised during the Second Wizarding War. The three curses are the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra); the Cruciatus Curse (Crucio) for inflicting intense pain; and the Imperius Curse (Imperio) for controlling the actions of another.

The Red Shoes

REDSHOES

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale is essentially a morality tale: a warning against the dangers of vanity. It’s also exceedingly grim. And unlike most other literary curses, it has nothing to do with true love.

A young girl, Karen, repeatedly wears her beautiful red shoes to church when she shouldn’t. Karen is vain and selfish and cares little for her adoptive mother; even when the mother is dying Karen goes to a party, once again wearing the beautiful dancing shoes. As a result, she is cursed to dance in her beautiful shoes forever, even after her death, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Eventually the curse is lifted, but not until Karen has had her feet chopped off, has had her way to church barred by her own still-dancing feet, and has died. Lesson learned, we imagine.

LadyHawke

In Joan D Vinge’s fantasy romance the evil Bishop of Aquila, a spurned suitor, curses two lovers to spend an eternity apart, whilst at the same time always being together. The knight Navarre is a man by day and a wolf by night. His lover, the beautiful Isobelle, is a hawk by day and a woman by night. Therefore they are never together in their human form, except for during a few moments between dawn and dusk. To break the curse the lovers need to face the Bishop together on a day when there is no night and a night when there is no day. Luckily, fate intervenes in the form of a solar eclipse and at the right moment the lovers face the bishop and break the curse. One of our favourite books whilst growing up.

Narnia: The Deplorable Word

DEPNARNIA

In The Magician’s Nephew, friends Digory and Polly arrive in a world lifeless but for one inhabitant: the Empress Jadis, who reappears in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as The White Witch. The children learn that the destruction around them is the result of a curse. When Jadis was about to be defeated by her sister she spoke The Deplorable Word, a curse that wiped out all life on her world – literally, everything – and put her into an ageless sleep. What a relief Lord Voldemort didn’t know that one.

511Xw+lHKlL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_ You can buy a copy of The Witches Kiss here or from your local book shop!

About Katharine & Elizabeth Corr

kandecorr

Stuff Katharine likes: playing instruments badly; dead languages; LOTR; loud pop concerts; Jane Austen; Neill Gaiman; Loki; the Surrey Hills. Killing off characters.

Stuff Elizabeth likes: sketching, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cinema, long baths, kitchen discos, Terry Pratchett, Thor, London. Saving characters.

Stuff we both like: YA / non-YA fantasy and science fiction,Star Wars, Star Trek, each other (most of the time).

You can find out more about Katharine and Elizabeth on their website – www.corrsisters.com

Or why not follow them on twitter – @katharinecorr and @lizcorr_writes

Blog Tour

Catch up on the rest of the blog tour at the below stops! hc_witches_kiss_blog_tour

A huge huge thank you to Katharine and Elizabeth for such a superb guest post and to Katharine for being so lovely to invite me onto the blog tour! Also a huge thank you to Vicki at Harper Collins for having me and being super wonderful too!

Have you read The Witches Kiss? What did you think? What are your favourite literary curses? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of this review or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

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Tales Event – #YABookBingeFest Waterstones Birmingham 16/04/2016

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On the 16th April 2016 I attended this brilliant YA event at Waterstones Birmingham with two awesome authors!

AL14 AL10 AL11 It was such a brilliant afternoon!

There was the super awesome Alice Oseman….

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And the lovely lovely Lauren James….

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We were encouraged to live tweet using the #YABookBingeFest from the event. A few of us did this and I think it really captured the conversations and the event so I have storified it!

As you can see the panel was brilliant!

I even caught the most gorgeous picture which really captures the friendship between these two brilliant authors!

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After the event it was time for a signing and to catch up with friends!

AL9 A huge thank you to Waterstones Birmingham for hosting such a fab event and to all the authors for being absolutely brilliant!

Happy Reading!

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Guest Post – Point Horror by Sophie Cleverly

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Do you remember the Point Horror Book Series from the 90’s? The Point Horror Series was a series of young adult point horror books and was launched in 1991 by Scholastic always with the Point Horror banner on the spine and on the top of every point horror book. There were a number of authors that wrote these books for Scholastic: R L Stine, Diane Hoh, Caroline B Cooney, Sinclair Smith to name but a few.

They were basically what I was reading and enjoying as a young adult and thanks to the author Juno Dawson, who started #PointHorrorBookClub on her website in 2013, I have started to re-read these books that I used to rush to the shops every weekend and buy and sit for the whole weekend reading.

Juno announced in January 2015 that she was no longer able to carry on #pointhorrorbookclub and with her blessing I am going to try and carry it on with version 2! Juno has done a fantastic job – I hope I can keep up her good work *gulps*

For links to #pointhorrorbookclub posts old and new please click here

I know lots of people who hold Point Horror close to their hearts and one of those people is wonderful author Sophie Cleverly ! I got talking to Sophie on twitter when she was talking about Point Horror so I asked her to stop by for a little Point Horror Guest Post and she kindly agreed.

Do check out Sophie’s fab Scarlett and Ivy series – perfect for fans of Holly Webb and Harry Potter and mysteries that demand to be solved and set in a creepy boarding school!

This is the story of how I became my sister…

A spine-tingling mystery set in a creepily atmospheric boarding school. Ivy must uncover the secrets behind her twin sister Scarlet’s disappearance before it’s too late.

When troublesome Scarlet mysteriously disappears from Rookwood School, terrifying Miss Fox invites her quiet twin sister Ivy to ‘take her place’.

Ivy reluctantly agrees in the hopes of finding out what happened to her missing sister. For only at Rookwood will Ivy be able to unlock the secrets of Scarlet’s disappearance, through a scattered trail of diary pages carefully hidden all over the school.

Can Ivy solve the mystery before Miss Fox suspects? Or before an even greater danger presents itself?

The twins have been reunited, but are definitely not out of danger…
Evil Miss Fox may have fled the scene, but headmaster Mr Bartholomew is back, imposing a reign of terror with his threats of epic punishments should any of the pupils step out of line.
When possessions and food start going missing, and the finger of suspicion is pointed firmly at troublemaking Scarlet, she knows she must uncover the truth to clear her name. The twins’ investigations through the school in the dead of night reveal a secret hidden deep within the walls, a terrible crime committed many years past, and a very real threat to their present…

It’s very exciting to have Sophie here on Tales…I feel very honoured…so thank you so much Sophie!

*Hands microphone to Sophie*

Point Horror

One of my earliest recollections of Point Horror is noticing the covers in the shops. They stood out, looking so garish with their creepy cover images and shiny titles like blood. I’d read a lot of Goosebumps, and these seemed like the next step up – they looked darker, scarier, more adult. I was a little younger than most readers of the series at the time, being only about nine or ten years old. But having been a huge fan of Buffy since I was seven, I loved the idea of American high school horror.

The books were addictive. Once I’d read one, I wanted to collect them all. I would go to the local library and take out a whole stack of them. They were tattered paperbacks that looked like they’d been read a hundred times, but that somehow added to the thrill – it had the feeling of something being handed down to you, like someone telling you an old ghost story around a campfire.

I think one reason I liked them is that they were just scary enough. Most of them weren’t all-out horror, but psychological thrillers with jealous teens resorting to murder. Lots of them followed similar patterns, which made them all the more easy and comforting to read, in spite of the scary subject matter.

There was a particular Point Horror book, though, that did properly scare me. It was part of the Point Horror Unleashed mini-series. I only learnt recently from this site that, contrary to my belief at the time, the books weren’t under that banner because they were particularly more frightening, but because they were by British authors, and had a slightly different style to the US books. In a way though, this did make them more frightening. A US high school seemed far-off and glamorous and distant to me, whereas the kids in these stories were much more relatable, which added a whole extra creepiness factor.

The book in question was Eve’s Party by Nick Turnbull. The weirdness of the cover certainly got my attention – it shows a girl’s face peering out from under murky green water. Clearly, this was not going to be the nice sort of party. The story is about kids who visit a mysterious village, which seems quaint and happy, except for the fact that no-one will talk about the terrible thing that happened back in 1936. And then the weird stuff begins. I remember quite vividly the description of Eve’s party itself, and exactly what she fed her guests. There’s a lot I can’t recall about the book, but many images from it were so weird that they’ve burned into my brain – blank-eyed children in an old school photo, savage dogs, a strange hut down by the water…

Although I may not have realised it at the time, I think I learnt a lot from Point Horror. It helped to teach me how to plot a thriller with plenty of twists and turns (and red herrings… has any series ever had more of the things?). And I think using bizarre imagery to burn the book into people’s brains is a fabulous idea (one reason why Miss Fox’s office in my books is the way it is).

Would I re-read Point Horror books? I’m not sure – I don’t think I could relive that magic of reading them as a 90s kids. But the Unleashed series… they were a bit more unusual and interesting, and threw some great UK authors like Celia Rees into the mix. I would be interested in giving them another go!

About Sophie Cleverly

Sophie Cleverly was born in Bath in 1989. She studied for a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Writing For Young People. The first two books of her Scarlet and Ivy series are out now from HarperCollins, with book 3 coming in July 2016.

Aside from writing, she can often be found blogging about symphonic metal, watching fantastical TV and struggling to find her way out of her ever-increasing pile of books.

Find out more about Sophie and her books on her website – hapfairy.co.uk

Or why not follow Sophie on twitter using @Hapfairy

Why not join in Point Horror Book Club and the discussion on the 13th of every month?

Don’t forget to use the #pointhorrorbookclub on twitter so I can see your thoughts or tweet me using @chelleytoy

Are the Point Horror books we loved as a teenager still our favourites on the re-read? Are you new to Point Horror? Has our opinion changed? Are they still as good? Do they stand up to modern day YA Horror? Or are the a whole load of cray cray?

For all #PointHorrorBookClub posts old and new click here

A huge huge thank you to Sophie for featuring on Tales and a huge round of applause for such a fab guest post!

*claps hands excitedly*

Do you remember Point Horror? Which was your favourite? Would you like to join in on #pointhorrorbookclub ?

Happy Point Horror-ing!

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Tales Event – #YABookBingeFest Waterstones Birmingham 16/04/2016

Guest Post – Point Horror by Sophie Cleverly