The Ruby's Fire cover has flying red birds and a skull house that screams all kinds of YA awesome

The Ruby's Fire cover has flying red birds, blue-painted nails, and a skull house that screams all kinds of YA Awesome! What do you guys think of the cover for Catherine's new book? It's designed by Jay Montgomery, and yes I'm typing in all bold because I'm that excited! Here's more on this project brought to you by Catherine's publicist, Giselle Cormier:

BOOK AND AUTHOR INFO:

Ruby's Fire

Catherine Stine
Series: Fireseed, #2 (however, can be read as a stand-alone)

Publication date:  June 26, 2013 <== Mark this on your calendar if you are a fan of the first book. If you've never heard of it, then you still have time to read it by clicking purchase HERE.
Genre: YA Sci-Fi

Synopsis:

If everything about you changes, what remains?

Seventeen year-old Ruby, long-pledged to the much older Stiles from the Fireseed desert cult, escapes with only a change of clothes, a pouch of Oblivion Powder and her mute little brother, Thorn. Arriving at The Greening, a boarding school for orphaned teens, she can finally stop running. Or can she? The Greening is not what it seems. Students are rampaging out of control and as she cares for the secret Fireseed crop, she experiences frightening physical changes. She’s ashamed of her attraction to burly, hard-talking Blane, the resident bodyguard, and wonders why she can’t be happy with the gentler Armonk. She’s long considered her great beauty a liability, a thing she’s misused in order to survive. And how is she to stop her dependence on Oblivion to find a real beauty within, using her talent as a maker of salves, when she has nightmares of Stiles without it?

When George Axiom, wealthy mogul of Vegas-by-the-Sea offers a huge cash prize for the winner of a student contest, Ruby is hopeful she might collect the prize to rescue her family and friends from what she now knows is a dangerous cult. But when Stiles comes to reclaim her, and Thorn sickens after creating the most astonishing contest project of all, the world Ruby knows is changed forever. This romantic fantasy set in 2099 on earth has a crafty heroine in Ruby, and a swoonworthy cast, which will surely appeal to the YA and new adult audience.

This cover is seriously gorgeous! Click to EMBIGGEN

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17970591-ruby-s-fire

Catherine Stine in an undated photo.

AUTHOR BIO

Catherine Stine writes YA, New Adult and middle grade fiction. Her YA futuristic thriller, Fireseed One, illustrated by the author was granted a Bronze Wishing Shelf Book Award and an Indie Reader Approved notable stamp. Her YA Refugees, earned a New York Public Library Best Book. Middle grade novels include A Girl’s Best Friend. More and more, she’s enjoying writing speculative tales. She teaches literature at the School of Visual Arts and creative writing at the Philadelphia Writing Conference and in her own ongoing NYC writing workshop. Catherine earned a double focus MFA in Creative Writing at the New School. 

Visit her at www.catherinestine.blogspot.com and at www.catherinestine.com.

Author Links:

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

If you run a blog and would like to help Catherine in her book tour, please go HERE to sign up.

Have a great Thursday.

Christine's Odyssey makes the Simms Siblings Series Sure Sound Super!

Howdy. I’m glad you’ve stopped in. My name is Christine and although I’m only eleven, I’m what some adults might call precocious. A lot has happened in my life, some of it bad, but like my dad used to say, good things can result from the bad stuff that happens to us.

To help me celebrate overcoming my challenges, a great gang of authors have teamed up and will be giving away copies of their books. Sweet, yes?

For a chance to win a pair of the books listed, you can do anything included on the Rafflecopter below or on Facebook. However, for those who’d like to win a $10.00 Amazon Gift Voucher, hop on over to the Jamaican Kid Lit Blog to enter for that.

Anyway, I tend to talk a lot, so before I carried away, here’s my story:

Raised in a hotbed of arguments and fights, eleven-year-old Christine Simms is the victim of her mother's cruelty. A domestic dispute ends in tragedy, sending the family into a tailspin.

A shocking discovery sends Christine on a quest to find the stranger who left her behind in Jamaica. Determined to unravel the mystery of her birth, Christine uses every tool at her disposal and treads with courage where no child should.

Thanks so much for dropping in! I hope you win the novels of your choice. I should tell you that you get to choose books based on how the Rafflecopter does the drawing of the winners. So, if your name comes up first, you get to say which pack you want.

Available in ebook format at AmazonUS  <<<CLICK

J.L. Campbell is a proud Jamaican, who is always on the hunt for story-making material.

She writes romantic suspense, women's fiction and young adult novels. She is the also the author of Contraband, Dissolution, Distraction, Don't Get Mad...Get Even, Giving up the Dream, Retribution and Hardware (written under the pen name Jayda McTyson).

Visit her on the web by clicking HERE.

a Rafflecopter giveaway a Rafflecopter giveaway

***** 

Christine's Odyssey makes the Simms Siblings Series Sure Sound Super!

I will be away from the desk Thursday and Friday. I'm visiting my parents for Easter. However, I shall see you soon enough next Monday as the A to Z challenge begins. I'm going to be blogging about my favorite canceled animated television series, The Clone Wars. I think the Star Wars universe told from the perspective of the cartoons is definitely fertile enough ground for me to find a topic for every letter.

Young Authors And Your Hair

I brought this up with Ciara Knight who runs an amazing blog, and yes, I am an odd duck that thinks of these things. Oh and I may have been influenced from having just watched Tangled as well (and the subliminal messages pushed by Disney).

Basically, I just want to know what's up? Why is long hair draping the heads of all of your books? Why do all of your female protagonists have long hair? 

Exhibit A--Please turn your eyes to the anecdotal evidence I have gathered to support my hypothesis:

Now, I just want to dismiss the idea that I'm making a blanket generalization.  I know that the percentage of young adult books that feature girls with long hair is not 100%.  Ciara Knight has already told me in a comment that her protagonist has short hair.  But the percentage is high.  I'm going to say maybe 95%.

So what's up with hair?  Why?  One of my best friends is Meg.  I asked her if I could post a picture of her and she agreed for this post that it would be okay.  So here she is at left.

Notice how short her hair is.  I think that Meg is a beautiful woman. So I guess my question is this.  What kind of message are all of you young adult authors out there peddling in your book? Is it that young ladies need to have long hair? If so...why?

Is it beauty?  Does having short hair make you less attractive to men?  I for one have plenty of guy friends and they never point out a girl's hair as the thing they are attracted to. It's always the "rack" or "butt" or body type.  So, am I just not getting something here?

Amanda Hocking goes really far with hair.  Her book Switched has pages devoted to hair care products, she refers to her character's hair all the time, calls it an unmanageable frizz and a tangled mess and whatnot.  She even says that her hair makes her ugly.  Like WTF?! Really?

And then there's the young adult movie Tangled by Walt Disney.  Rapunzel loses all of her magical power and becomes normal when her hair is cut.  It also goes from sunny gold to dark brown. However, I still find the new Rapunzel attractive for a cartoon.  But having her hair cut also freed her from the evil witch that dominated her life.  So is this a message? If you cut your hair you lose your power but you also set yourself free.

So discuss please.  Let me know your opinions on hair. I'm interested and want to know.  And please tell me if you are writing a young adult novel with a protagonist that has short hair. I would like to know why you made that choice seeing as the market is awash with long-haired ladies.